I've combed throught the help files and cannot find anything that answers my question.  Here goes:

I have always used the 'Books I've Read List' to keep track of the books I read in a year.  I just think it's fun to have a milestone and try to beat it.  Anyway, I just went to the 'Books I've Read List' and notices that almost all the books have the same 'Date Read' date!  I'm going to assume that this is that date that I rated all the books (when that feature became available).  This is not a useful field at all now! 

Here is the actual question restated:  Why was the 'Date Read' changed to the date I rated the book, even though the field previously had the actual date I added the book to the 'Books I've Read List'?  And what can I do to get back the actual date I READ the book?

When they put that new feature, it actually removed the books from your BIR until they were rated.  Once you rated them it put them back on again.  Now, you can't put a book on your BIR unless you rate it.  It should be a one time thing, so you won't have the date confusion next time.  I don't know how you could get the correct date.  DId you post them the same day you put them on your BIR?  If you did you can check date posted. 

Sorry, I'm probably not much help

Thanks for your ideas.  Checking my actual bookshelf would help, since the date is there, but what about the books that have already been swapped?  They aren't on the bookshelf anymore. 

This doesn't solve the problem that the historical listings in the BIR list were completely messed up by requiring us to go back and rate all the books.  Of course I did that and it changed the 'date read' to the DATE RATED.  I understand that it works for books that I add now, because you have to rate the book when you add it.  It just doesn't make a lot of sense to change the dates on the ones that were already on the BIR list. 

/ok rant over

Quite a few people have complained to the Tour Guides about that change, so you aren't the only person who was inconvenienced by that feature...  I don't know that there will ever be a "fix" for it (it doesn't seem to be a high priority To Do item with all the other site changes/maintenance that is done on the site) but as mentioned above, you can take heart that it is a one-time problem and that for future additions to your BIR the date will be accurate. 

Well it would be time consuming but you could look them up in your transaction archive to give you an idea of when you posted/sent out some of them.