ebk-select

The ebk-select command launches a fuzzy finder program, presenting the title, authors, publisher, and tags of all the books in your library. As you type in key words or names, the list gets narrowed down. When you press Enter, the selected e-book gets opened in your default viewer via xdg-open.

Rationale

Why not just use Calibre?

Unless you have the Calibre app open all the time, opening a book in Calibre is a multi-step process that involves several context switches and takes a several seconds, even with keyboard shortcuts. ebk-select is designed to open your book and get out of the way as fast as possible.

It can also be used on a system that doesn’t have Calibre installed, e.g. if the library was created on a different system and copied across or mounted via USB drive.

Why not use the file manager (or find or fzf)?

This is certainly an option, especially if you have a file manager that lets you save and re-run searches. But the file paths contain extraneous information (database IDs) and don’t include all authors, full titles, or any subject tags. Unless your file manager also supports querying the metadata of various e-book formats, ebk-select provides more precise filtering.