Can’t Finish a New Yorker Story Online? The Magazine Will Now Send You an Email Reminder to Come Back

For as long as The New Yorker has existed, its readers have lamented not being able to get through everything in the magazine. Everyone from The Onion to Thought Catalog has addressed the scourge of an unread stack of magazines, and a group of four anonymous New Yorker fans this summer even started a newsletter summarizing the best of each issue.

Now The New Yorker itself is experimenting with a way to help readers finish its stories online. Last week, the magazine debuted a new widget on its website that tries to anticipate when a reader is about to close out of a story and pops up asking if the reader wants an emailed reminder to come back to the spot where they were left off. So if, for some unthinkable reason, you get distracted only 22,000 words into John McPhee’s 28,000 words on the Atchafalaya River, you can start again there later.