We've just launched Airlists which should help with this. If you go to your "Read" list, you can add a column for "dates read". That'll allow you to set your start/end dates for any or all books right there on the list page.

We're working on a way to improve this. It's a more complicated issue that means more fields need to be added. Here's how we're working to solve this:

For each book, there are 5 date-related fields:

• Date you first added this book. This is usually the date you first saved it to your want to read list.
• Date first read. This is the date you first finished reading it.
• Last date read. This is the most recent date you finished reading it. If you've only read this book once, then these two will be the same.
• Review date. This is the date we show as when you reviewed the book. This will only show up next to your review.
• All dates read (w/start & end date). This can be 0 to many date pairs with a start/end date and a reading format (read, listened to, both).

We're aiming to have this out around the end of June/early July.

This is something I've noticed as well. The Goodreads import only gives the date finished for a book too - which means that someone would need to enter the date started for each book.

It's currently possible to change the start/end date for each book by opening up the review form and going to the "Dates Read" tab. That's quite a few steps though, so we could make it easier.