If you mark a book as read on Goodreads and you didn't read every single word Jeff Bezos himself will step out of a mirror in your house and murder you in the night.

Cover to cover.

No one is paying attention to how many books you say you've "read." The only person this number matters to is you.

You can. You're not going to jail for it. You can also not read anything from a book and mark it read. Turns out neither is a crime.

You be you. Nobody cares what you consider 'read'.

I personally couldn’t live with the fact I marked it as ‘read’ when I didn’t.

You can also track each story individually. Often the stories exist as their own entities. Numbers will be higher, but you will track each you read. (Source - in the middle of reading 'Midwinter Murder' short stories and in same boat ;) )

It's up to you.

If you’re done with it, it’s read. Sounds like you at least looked over the ones you didn’t finish

Anything I read to the end is 'read', even if I skip a few paragraphs here or there (rarely). Anything else is a DNF, whether I quit after 5 pages or 200.

It’s totally up to you of course. And it depends on what for and why you’re tracking the number of books you read. It’s not like reading challenges are this sacred, centralized idea that you can meaningfully ‘cheat’ on.

It sounds self-evident, but if you are tracking books you’ve read every word of, don’t count it. If you’re tracking books you feel done with, count it. If you’re using it just as a log to track what you’ve read in a given year, count it. If you’re doing a fun challenge with friends, ask them, or count it, or don’t.

Normally, I'd say when you've actually read through 100% of it, but a collection of stories is a little different. If you have valid reasons for not reading every story, I say go ahead and mark it "read" in your mind, no point forcing yourself to endure something you don't enjoy.

I don’t but I really don’t care what anyone else does. I do occasionally read essays or whatever that I will give fractions to, but that I just my own odd fun thing.

my annual goal is both books and pages. so i count the short story collection as read, even if i did not read all of the stories, but i mark the page amount as a % of the stories read. so if i read 12 of 20 stories and the whole book is 700 pages. i 700/20*12 and list that number.

counting pages keeps me from choosing short books just to meet the goal.

but ultimately it is up to you and what you feel comfortable doing.

If you told me you read it and later I found out these shocking details I would not be shocked and be okay. If you said you read it all or such then I'd feel it was misrepresented ... in the hypothetical universe where anything like this conversation takes place.

For me, if I read around 60% or so of a book I consider it read.

Your goal, your rules. I personally don't count a book read unless I read it all, but I don't think it's cheating if you count a book that you read the parts you wanted to read.

I set a variety of reading goals each year and I like to be clear on my own rules for myself, but I also reserve the right to change the rules later if what I set up stops working for me.

When I participate in a reading challenge and my reading log, I only count books that I've read from start to finish. However some goals that I set for myself I will count partially read books. For example, this year I have a goal to read or DNF the last 20 books that are on my physical shelf and that moved with me 3 years ago. If I start the book and decide I don't want to finish it, it goes into my pile of books to get rid off and I check it off my list.

I recommend you decide what your goal is for that book and then log it in whatever manner feels right to you.

I'll say I do like that I can mark a book as DNF on Storygraph. You can also create a shelf on GoodReads for partial reads or DNF books, but only if you feel the need to keep a record of it.

You can. You can go through and add every book you've ever touched to your read list. There are no set rules and there shouldn't be. Ultimately, don't get sucked in the rabbit hole of racing through books to hit a reading goal or page count. All of that is just a bonus fun Stat to track and you can track it however you please.

I did that with Dexter’s series.

They are 8 books. I read 5 and a half. On the 6th I didn’t want to continue as they were so boring after the 3rd and quite not interesting anymore.

I marked 6, 7 and 8 as read and asked my partner for a summary (we have a book club between ourselves)

With short stories/anthologies/collections, I wouldn’t see it bad to mark the book as read even if you skipped few. The book is done for you and you judge it to yourself from the ones you got to read

You are reading for yourself, not for anyone else. You can consider it being read. However, I've been doing a project in my diary drawing a bookshelf full of the books I've read. Tho I only draw the fully finished books in them 🤷‍♀️ I could draw the unfinished books on it as well, bit I would feel like some kind of an impostor tbh

When I have read at least the main part of it - not necessarily including prefatory matter, introduction, foreword, acknowledgements, notes, appendices, index, addenda, errata, corrigenda, & suchlike.

I'm not trying to be mean here or anything, but why does it matter?

Nobody's keeping track except you.

If you read half of the short stories and the other half don't interest you, why force yourself to read them? Life's too short. Move on to something you like better.

I support you marking it as read. There are die-hards who will insist skipped pages or late DNFs don't count, but just like a relationship-- if you gave it your best go and just couldn't commit, it's still a notch on the bed post IMO.

I'd say, if you read enough to give a reliable opinion, it's read. If someone were to ask you "How did you like it?" and your natural response is "I didn't really read enough to decide," then you didn't read it.

Personally, I consider a book fully read when I've read all of it. But I've also abandoned a few books partway through and I still consider those read but enough to realise that I don't like it.