books app crashes frequently- app is unusable

Running 15.6.1 on an iPad Air gen 3.

Apple Books crashes almost all the time.

If I shut down and reboot, it can take 20 minutes or more of

1. Open Books.
2. Less than a minute later it crashes.

It also happens at least once a day when I haven't rebooted.

I can be reading for a long time, then close the app.

Later when I open Books again, it crashes repeatedly.

Another characteristic of the failure is all of my books disappear and slowly reappear.

1. Open Books, only 2 books are there.
2. Some of the other books may reappear; sometimes I have to restart several times until it looks like most/all of the books are there again.
3. This can take 20 minutes or more before I see my books.

Another characteristic is that the books are no longer in order.

Example:

I sort my books by "Recent."

All of my books disappear except for those two.

When the other books reappear, it is not in the same order, even though Recent is still selected.

Choosing Recent again does not change this.

Is this they way the app works?