huzzah!!! this is a fantastic addition.

This is amazing, thank you!

Just logged in to ask for this feature and so glad to see it marked as in progress. I hope we get it soon

Im really looking forward to this feature, and I know it'll be super useful for keeping track of books I'm just not in the mood to finish at this time but want to return to

I just wanted to add a comment to say how much I love that you are listening to your users. This is a feature I requested a long time ago and I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one who thinks it's a great idea.

Something else that might be nice to include with this sort of feature is if maybe after a week or two (or maybe individual users can set their own "timers") of no progress made on a book, a notification pops up asking something like "Would you like to put this book on pause/hold/whatever?" Sometimes I'll totally forget I've started a book because of life stuff or maybe I'm telling myself I'll get back to it soon, but I know that after like ten days of not touching it I most likely will not actually get back to it for quite a while. Just a thought that maybe having the option for this sort of thing could be interesting or helpful for some.

Adding a comment to this also to show that this feature is still very much wanted!
I‘m a big mood reader as well and have to read a bit of multiple books to decide which one I want to read next. I still want to track all that I‘ve read that day though! Also sometimes due to life I might lose track of a book or, especially if it’s longer, fall out of the mood for it. So I have over 20 current reads now because of that and it’s just so much! Also some have been paused by me for months now so if I do eventually finish them, the time it took me to do that will be so long even though I wasn’t actively reading it throughout. I don’t like using the dnf feature for it, because there are books I legitimately dnfed because I didn’t like them and I don’t want these ones to be between them somewhere :(
So yeah still very much a wanted feature and would be cool if it could be implemented sometime soon!

Amazing idea! Sometimes I'm reading a book and I just loose interest or my interest shifts. I'm not quitting the book, but I also don't want my "in progress" to be 10 books long either...

Now that the AMAZING stat of how long you spend with each book is always available on the stats page, I'd definitely like to be able to pause a book so it doesn't skew that. I'm reading one book that's a companion to a whole series of 18 books, so after each individual book I then go to the companion and read its chapter -- which means I'll end up spending six months + on that one which will drag down my average actual time spent actively reading a book. Same for several non-fiction reads -- I do a few chapters at a time when my brain isn't overcrowded, put them down intentionally, and go back. DNF "feels" negative, pause would be so much more intentional and accurate!

Welp, count me in to the ranks of people who didn't entirely see the need for this before, but now desperately wants it 😂 My new "time to finish" stat is quite skewed by some outliers of books that I've kept in "Currently Reading" for months at a time even though I wasn't really "currently" reading them. Would love a way to pause a book so that stat becomes a little more accurate.

I'd loooove this too! I used to think that the DNF feature was sort of like a paused status, where you can continue from where you left off when you get back to it. But then I tried it and found out it's not! So now some of my books will say that it took 300 days to finish...

I'd also love a paused (or on-hold or backburner - whatever you want to call it) option that removes the currently reading status and pauses the active reading timeline, so when I finally do finish a paused book, it doesn't look like it took me 5 years to finish it. Because sometimes it does take me that long to pick a book back up!

Thank you so much for this platform and for taking user suggestions so seriously!

sammmmmmmmeeee would really love this

This would be a good feature to differentiate the books that I might not currently be in the mood for but intend to finish eventually and the books that I purposefully DNF and will probably never pick up again.
For me leaving them on the currently reading becomes stressful after sometime because the number keeps growing and at the same time it feels like I'm neglecting it. The workaround I've used sometimes is that I put it back to to read status and when I pick it up again I adjust the number of pages read in the journal but it's a bit complicated because sometimes I mess up the order and the journal becomes a little weird + I often forget about them because they return in my never ending list of TBR.
The perfect solution I think is as someone down suggested to have this new status and keep them in the Currently reading page but with a divider and tracking the pause on the journal. The best would probably be to ask the user if they want to start again (and then reset progress) or pick up from where they left off when they decide to bring it to the currently reading again.

I would also adore this! I'm a huge mood reader, and very easily distracted, and would love to set certain books aside to return to later, taking them out of my "currently reading" area but maintaining their stats and being able to view them all together in one place.

Side note: I suggested almost this exact same thing in the Librarian server, and it currently has 23 agreement emoji, so please mentally add them onto the votes here :D

I need this feature so bad!!! I would love a pause option as well since I read a lot of library books and when life is busy I might have to check them out a few times to get it all read. I also think it would be nice since the end of the year wrap up calculated the average of how long does it take you to read a book and I'd like it not to be included when I'm not actually actively reading a book. I'm a huge stats nerd and I like things to be accurate :D DNF seems a bit harsh, especially since I rarely DNF books (plus they go to a separate menu where I will never see them again) and I don't want to DNF books I know I will continue in a few weeks or a couple months.

They way I'm managing "paused books" is by having then on Currently Reading with a "on-hold" tag. It works fine but I would love to have this option!

I also think about this every time I read a large anthology, a dense work, or just very popular books I have to return and wait for again at the library. For now, I just try not to log those books here.

In practice, I imagine it as a second “continue watching” type of library as opposed to a “don’t recommend again” blacklist.

Long winded way of saying I hope this feature is still being considered :) You are all incredible, thanks for everything you do!

For me, this would be a nice option so that pages don't get counted twice. Right now, if I DNF a book, then go back to currently reading and pick back up where I left off, it'll count 100 pages when I DNF and 100 pages when I pick it back up. I'd love a Paused status so that it wasn't on my currently reading (or at least was less conspicuous on that page), but that I didn't have to DNF a book I plan to finish. I'm in the middle of a book that I set aside for about a year, but I'm not starting it over and don't need the pages I've already read to count in the new year.

I'd also like the time the book is paused for to be subtracted from the total time it took to read the book. So if it took me 6 months to read a book, but it was paused for 5, then list it as taking a month in the read history.

I would prefer to still have paused books on my currently reading, but as a separate section below the active books

This would be handy for me. Like you say, with books that contain multiple stories I might sometimes read one now and one in 2 years time etc. I wouldn't want to DNF it because it's still in progress and I plan to read the rest.

I guess to answer your question @Abbie, with Paused I would like it to remain on a list somewhere as something I 'plan to read', so perhaps for me the problem with DNF is that it hides it away on a separate page. Which I love about DNF - no-one wants their DNFs haunting them! But if I actively plan to go back and read the rest, rather than just 'might try again one day', then I'd say I would probably want it to be either in my To-Read Pile or my Currently Reading list probably as a subsection. The Paused status would separate it from things I'm actively reading right now.

An example for me is Austen's The Watsons and Sanditon. This is a single audiobook, I listened to The Watsons in January, and I plan on listening to Sanditon before the end of the year most likely, but it seems odd to have it on my Currently Reading for so long when I'm not actively reading it, and in fact, each one only takes a couple of hours.

I’m happy to leave paused books in my currently reading, alongside whatever currently has priority. I’d want to be reminded to come back to it, and I’m not sure where else I’d look.

I do think having too many in currently reading can be overwhelming, so I’m intrigued by your idea, but I guess I’m asking myself aloud if your solution is also my solution.

For me, a “backburner” section of currently reading that hides the books on the homepage but shows them at the end of the list when you click through might be enough. Perhaps the opposing analogue to whatever the “Up Next” section will look like?

Popping in to note that I'm glad this is in the first rank or so (popularity-wise) of the requested items. I dream of the day when I can add my short story collections to my TSG. :)

Hi emfass. Yes, as you say (if I understand correctly): the DNF would be appropriate for books I don't intend to return to while the proposed "Paused" would be for just that...books I have set aside for a time but intend to return to and finish.

The one thing I could think of where the differentiation would be useful is books I definitely don't intend to pick back up again, vs. ones I just have to put down for a while but want to come back and finish. I suppose that could be done with tags, though...?

Hi Abbie -- I don't think that's something to worry about. I think DNF is appropriate for those books that one just didn't "click" with. ---- Thanks for considering the "Paused" for all the short story collections I read!! Will come in very handy.

Hey Pangwynne, thanks for the suggestion!

Do you think there's anything we could to make the DNF option seem less negative - we have tried to make it quite neutral, since you can just add an explanation which could be anything from 'I had to return it to the library' to 'I hated it after 20 pages'.

It's something to think about!