GitHub - mkaz/libro: A terminal based book tracking tool

Libro

📚 Libro: A terminal-based tool to track your reading history, with your data stored locally in a SQLite database.

Core Concepts

Libro separates books and reviews to give you flexibility in how you track your reading:

Books: Store information about the book itself (title, author, pages, genre, publication year)
Reviews: Track your personal reading experience (date read, rating, review text)

This separation allows you to:

Add books to your database without having read them yet
Add multiple reviews for the same book (re-reads)
Maintain a clean library of books separate from your reading history

Interface

Libro provides two ways to interact with your reading data:

Interactive TUI (Default):

libro - Launch the interactive terminal interface with search and navigation
Navigate with arrow keys, search with /, add books with a, view lists with l
Press q to quit, ? for help with key bindings

Command Line Interface:

libro report - Reading history table
libro report --author - Author statistics (most read authors)
libro report --author "Name" - Books/reviews by specific author
libro report --chart - Yearly reading chart
libro report 123 - Book/review details for review id
libro add - Add book + review
libro book - Book management (show, add, edit)
libro review - Review management (show, add, edit)
libro list - Reading list management

Usage

Add books and review:: libro add

Book Management

Add book only (no review): libro book add

Show recent books: libro book (shows latest 20 books by default)

Show specific book: libro book 42

Edit book details only: libro book edit 42

Search and filter books:

Show books by author: libro book --author "Stephen King"

Show books by title: libro book --title "Foundation"

Show books published in specific year: libro book --year 2024

All search options support partial matching, so --author "King" will find "Stephen King", "Tabitha King", etc.

Review Management

Show recent reviews: libro review (shows latest 20 reviews by default)

Show specific review: libro review 123

Add review to existing book: libro review add 42

Edit review details only: libro review edit 123

Search and filter reviews:

Show reviews by author: libro review --author "Stephen King" (searches book authors)

Show reviews by book title: libro review --title "Foundation" (searches book titles)

Show reviews from specific year: libro review --year 2024 (searches by date_read)

All search options support partial matching, and year filtering uses the date the review was made, not the book's publication year.

Reading Lists

Create a reading list: libro list create "My Reading List" --description "Books to read"

Show all reading lists: libro list show

Show specific list: libro list show 1

Import books to a new list: libro list import books.csv --name "Sci-Fi Classics" --description "Science fiction must-reads"

See: libro --help for more information.

Examples

Interactive TUI Interface

The default interface is an interactive terminal application with search capabilities:

Launch with libro (no arguments)
Use arrow keys to navigate between books
Press / to search by title or author
Press Enter to view book details
Press a to add new books
Press l to view reading lists

CLI Report View

Access the traditional table view with libro report:

❯ libro report
                                 Books Read in 2025
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID         ┃ Title                        ┃ Author               ┃ Rating ┃ Date Read    ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Fiction    │                              │                      │        │              │
│ 1          │ Cujo                         │ Stephen King         │ 3      │ Jan 05, 2025 │
│ 585        │ The Midnight Library         │ Matt Haig            │ 5      │ Jan 13, 2025 │
│ 587        │ The Maid                     │ Nita Prose           │ 4      │ Jan 20, 2025 │
│ 589        │ Into the Water               │ Paula Hawkins        │ 2      │ Feb 02, 2025 │
│ 584        │ Salem's Lot                  │ Stephen King         │ 3      │ Mar 12, 2025 │
│ 595        │ The Thursday Murder Club     │ Richard Osman        │ 3      │ Mar 20, 2025 │
│ 596        │ Remarkably Bright Creatures  │ Shelby Van Pelt      │ 5      │ Mar 27, 2025 │
│ 598        │ Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki     │ Haruki Murakami      │ 3      │ Apr 09, 2025 │
│ 599        │ Ten                          │ Gretchen McNeil      │ 3      │ Apr 16, 2025 │
│            │                              │                      │        │              │
│ Nonfiction │                              │                      │        │              │
│ 586        │ The Art Thief                │ Michael Finkel       │ 4      │ Jan 14, 2025 │
│ 588        │ All the Pieces Matter        │ Jonathan Abrams      │ 3      │ Jan 27, 2025 │
│ 590        │ Supercommunicators           │ Charles Duhigg       │ 4      │ Feb 04, 2025 │
│ 593        │ Leonardo da Vinci            │ Walter Isaacson      │ 3      │ Mar 02, 2025 │
│ 594        │ The Leap to Leader           │ Adam Bryant          │ 3      │ Mar 08, 2025 │
│ 597        │ Team of Rivals               │ Doris Kearns Goodwin │ 3      │ Apr 06, 2025 │
└────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴────────┴──────────────┘

Books by Year Chart

❯ libro report --chart

                         Books Read by Year

  Year   Count   Bar
 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  2013   3       ▄▄▄▄
  2014   4       ▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2015   11      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2016   30      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2017   21      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2018   27      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2019   29      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2020   27      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2021   28      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2022   27      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2023   32      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2024   30      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  2025   17      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Author Report and Filtering

Show author statistics (most read authors):

❯ libro report --author

         Most Read Authors

  Author                Books Read
 ──────────────────────────────────
  Stephen King          15
  George R.R. Martin    5
  Timothy Zahn          4
  Grady Hendrix         4
  Andy Weir             4
  William Zinsser       3
  Roald Dahl            3
  Riley Sager           3
  Philip K. Dick        3
  Neil Gaiman           3
  Natalie D. Richards   3
  Lucy Foley            3
  Cory Doctorow         3

Show books/reviews by specific author:

❯ libro report --author "Stephen King"

                                Books by Stephen King
┏━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID ┃ Title                        ┃ Author        ┃ Rating ┃ Date Read    ┃
┡━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1  │ Cujo                         │ Stephen King  │ 3      │ Jan 05, 2025 │
│ 584│ Salem's Lot                  │ Stephen King  │ 3      │ Mar 12, 2025 │
└────┴──────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴────────┴──────────────┘

Reading Lists

Reading lists allow you to organize books into curated collections. You can create lists for different genres, themes, or reading goals.

Creating and Managing Lists

Create a new reading list:

libro list create "2025 Reading Goals" --description "Books I want to read this year"

View all your reading lists:

❯ libro list show

                                    Reading Lists
┏━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID ┃ Name               ┃ Description                      ┃ Total Books ┃ Read ┃ Unread ┃ Progress         ┃
┡━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1  │ Sci-Fi Classics    │ Science fiction must-reads       │ 50          │ 12   │ 38     │ ██░░░░░░░░ 24.0% │
│ 2  │ Horror Collection  │ Spine-tingling tales             │ 30          │ 8    │ 22     │ ███░░░░░░░ 26.7% │
│ 3  │ Literary Classics  │ Timeless masterpieces            │ 45          │ 15   │ 30     │ ███░░░░░░░ 33.3% │
└────┴────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┴─────────────┴──────┴────────┴──────────────────┘

Use 'libro list show <id>' to see books in a specific list

View books in a specific list:

❯ libro list show 1

                           📚 Sci-Fi Classics - Science fiction must-reads
┏━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID ┃ Status ┃ Title                                    ┃ Author                 ┃ Genre           ┃ Rating ┃ Date Read  ┃
┡━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 42 │ 📖     │ Foundation                               │ Isaac Asimov           │ science fiction │ —      │ —          │
│ 43 │ 📖     │ Dune                                     │ Frank Herbert          │ science fiction │ —      │ —          │
│ 44 │ ✅     │ The Left Hand of Darkness                │ Ursula K. Le Guin      │ science fiction │ 5      │ 2024-12-15 │
│ 45 │ ✅     │ Neuromancer                              │ William Gibson         │ science fiction │ 4      │ 2024-11-20 │
└────┴────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┴─────────────────┴────────┴────────────┘

📊 Progress: 12 read, 38 unread (24.0% complete)

Adding Books to Lists

Add a new book to an existing list:

This will prompt you to enter book details interactively.

Importing Books to Lists

Import books from a CSV file and create a new list at the same time:

libro list import books.csv --name "Mystery Novels" --description "Page-turners and whodunits"

Import books to an existing list:

libro list import more-books.csv --id 1

CSV Format: The CSV file should have the following columns in order:

Title
Author
Publication Year (optional)
Pages (optional)
Genre (optional)

Example CSV:

Title,Author,Publication Year,Pages,Genre
The Martian,Andy Weir,2011,369,science fiction
Klara and the Sun,Kazuo Ishiguro,2021,303,literary fiction

List Management

Edit a list's name or description:

libro list edit 1 --name "Updated Name" --description "New description"

Add a book to a list:

Remove a book from a list:

Delete an entire list:

View statistics for all lists:

View statistics for a specific list:

Install

Libro is packaged as libro-book on PyPI.

You can also clone this repository and install it locally:

git clone https://github.com/mkaz/libro.git
cd libro
pip install -e .

Setup

On first run, libro will create a libro.db database file based on database location. It will prompt for confirmation to proceed which also shows the location where the file will be created.

Database locations:

The following order is used to determine the database location:

Using the --db flag on command-line.
libro.db in current directory
Environment variable LIBRO_DB to specify custom file/location
Finally, the user's platform-specific data directory
- Linux: ~/.local/share/libro/libro.db
- macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/libro/libro.db
- Windows: %APPDATA%\libro\libro.db

For example, if you want to create a new database file in the current directory, you can use the following command:

Import from Goodreads

Libro can import your reading history from a Goodreads export CSV file.

libro import goodreads_library_export.csv

There is a genre field that accepts any string value, but this data is not available in the Goodreads export. You can edit books to add or change the genre after import.

Database Schema

Books table

Field	Type	Description
id	primary key	Unique identifier
title	string	Book title
author	string	Book author
pages	int	Number of pages in book
pub_year	int	Year book was published
genre	string	Genre (any string value)

Reviews table

Field	Type	Description
id	primary key	Unique identifier
book_id	foreign key	Book identifier
date_read	date	Date book was read
rating	float	Number between 0 and 5
review	text	Review of book

Reading Lists table

Field	Type	Description
id	primary key	Unique identifier
name	string	Reading list name (unique)
description	string	Optional description
created_date	date	Date the list was created

Reading List Books table

Field	Type	Description
id	primary key	Unique identifier
list_id	foreign key	Reading list identifier
book_id	foreign key	Book identifier
added_date	date	Date book was added to list
priority	int	Priority/order in list (default: 0)

Changelog

See GitHub Releases for the changelog.