Bookworm 🪱📚

A simple script for offline access of notes and Kindle highlights.

Set Up

1. Clone this repo.

git clone git@github.com:zorbash/bookworm.git

2. Configure

cp .env.template .env

Update the .env file with your Kindle email, Notion access key and notion database ID.

Notion Import

For the Notion import to work, you have to create an integration first, and allow it to access the database to be updated. Read more about this here. The database has to be created beforehand with the following fields:

Notion Database Fields

Name	Type
Book	title
Author	text
ASIN	text
ID	text
Location	number
Highlight	text
ImportedAt	date
Status	select

The naming convention (CamelCase) follows the default Notion databases.

3. Ensure Ruby (version >= 3.0) is installed

Install dependencies with:

bundle install

Usage

Print all available commands and options with:

./notes --help

sync_local

./notes sync_local

It asks for your Kindle password and downloads all your kindle notes in books.json. You can change the location of the JSON file by setting the DB_FILEPATH (can be set in the .env file).

Notes

It can also import into the books.json "database" file your hand-typed notes. Such notes can be written in a notes.yml file (configurable via the NOTES_PATH environment variable). The schema of the notes file is:

-
  # The asin key may also hold an ISBN
  asin: 0-679-76288-4
  title: High Output Management
  author: Andy Grove
  highlights:
    -
      location: 17 # Page number
      text: >
        A genuinely effective indicator will cover the output of the work unit and not simply
        the activity involved.

A sample notes file can be found here.

Syncing all your Kindle highlights can take a couple of minutes. There's an option to sync only your notes with the --notes-only flag.

💡 It is advisable to check the books.json file in Git.

Use DEBUG=true to print debugging output.

search

./notes search <keyword>

Prints any highlights which match the given keyword.

Example:

./notes search work

Found 179 results for "work"

╔════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  Book:   High Output Management                                    ║
║  Author: Andy Grove                                                ║
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

 A genuinely effective indicator will cover the output of the work unit
and not simply the activity involved.

Bookworm by default pipes to a pager like less when the number of results might flood the screen. To disable this behaviour, use the --no-pager flag.

random

./notes random

Returns a random highlight.

Example:

╔════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  Book:   The Genealogy of Morals                                   ║
║  Author: Friedrich Nietzsche                                       ║
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

 All sick and diseased people strive instinctively after a herd-organisation,
out of a desire to shake off their sense of oppressive discomfort and weakness;
the ascetic priest divines this instinct and promotes it;

update_notion

Syncs the local "database" file into a Notion database.

It supports the --since <date> flag to only sync the database entries which have been updated since the given date (ISO-8601 formatted). This option is particularly useful since the Notion API is rate-limited and for more than 1000 highlights syncing can take significant time (more than 10 minutes).

Is it any good?

Yes

zorbash / bookworm