As a user of Google Reader who many times rises above 1000 unread posts because of more pressing matters I tend to prune my posts by using the following keyboard shortcuts:

• Pressing ‘n’ and ‘p’ for next and previous posts (yeah I know that j, k is the cool way)
• and pressing ‘m’ to mark the post as (keep as unread) when I get to a post that I would like to read later.

This way I don’t have to mess with the star system and remember to clean up my stared items.

The issue comes from the fact that all the pertinent information about the state of the post is at the end, not easily visible (even on a 1920×1080 laptop screen) when just skimming headlines and checking associated pictures to quickly see if the article is one that you would like to read later (or see it’s status).

Perhaps adding either a ‘Mark as read’ Button next to the Previous / Next buttons or moving the status bar to a absolute location at the bottom of the page, like so.

Although the the later gives the user more info it also takes a way a line or two from the post.

I’m not sure this is an issue that needs to be solved but I think I might have the right work flow for what I’m doing.