About BookRev
I forgot to do my "favorite books of 2025" post and realized I had no idea what I'd actually read that year. Scattered across Libby, Audible, and Kindle - no unified view anywhere.
Turns out you can export your data from all three services. So I did what any reasonable developer would do: I built an app to parse it all into something useful.
BookRev is the reading companion to RunRev - same philosophy of simple, at-a-glance stats, just for books instead of runs.
Features
- Import from Libby - Export your library history and import it
- Import from Audible - Grab your audiobook listening data
- Import from Kindle - Pull in your ebook reading history
- Unified timeline - See everything in one place
- Year in review - Finally answer "what did I read this year?"
- Reading stats - Books per month, pages read, listening time
The Data Export Discovery
Each service has its own way of exporting data:
- Libby has a surprisingly clean export option in the app settings
- Audible lets you request your data through Amazon's privacy tools
- Kindle reading history can be pulled from your Amazon account
The fun part was parsing three completely different data formats into a unified model. Each service tracks different things - Audible knows listening time, Kindle knows reading progress, Libby knows checkout dates. BookRev normalizes it all.
What's Missing
Physical books. I still read actual paper books sometimes, and there's no automatic way to track those. For now, BookRev is just my digital reading - which is still the majority of what I read.
Maybe someday I'll add manual entry for physical books, but that feels like scope creep for what's meant to be a simple stats app.
Why I Love Building These
Little apps like this are my favorite things to make. A specific problem, a focused solution, built in a weekend. No need for it to be a business or have a million features. Just scratch your own itch and move on.
The best part? Now I'll never forget what I read again.
Screenshots
Tech Stack
- SwiftUI for the UI
- Custom parsers for Libby, Audible, and Kindle export formats
- Charts framework for visualizations
- SwiftData for local storage