I’d really like a way to allow certain friends to see private books.

Maybe like a close friends group and then the option to make books private for everyone including close friends or private to everyone except close friends.

And I don't know if this is possible but if there was any way private books weren't incorporated into future recommendations. Sometimes I don't add a book simply because I dont want similar books recommended in future just because im reading this one now.

I second some way of seeing at a glance what ive marked private, eg on the current reads home page. And a way of filtering them.

Another idea - to be able to run stats on private books only, as well as a way to identify private books in the regular stats charts. For example, I’d like to know what genres of books I mark as private.

I know it’s been discussed that having a private icon on the cover isn’t preferable. But it’d be good to have some way to easily identify private books in lists such as shelves, tags, etc. Maybe by having the private status clearly identified in the short list of options next to a book when it appears in list view?