I am not a big fan of "newsfeeds" in general, and particularly not how they are implemented in Faithlife. It seems to be a random compilation of mostly useless stuff. For example:

I have no idea who "grippit" is. I don't care what book (s)he is reading. I don't care what (s)he has to say about said book. Does "grippit" know that I am reading his/her post? Is someone reading my post(s) without my knowledge?
Another thing: The news feed is just too plain confusing. Good design MUST start with the four basic principles of design:
- Contrast
- Repetition
- Alignment
- Proximity
The various posts and replies just all run together. It is awful. Perhaps the OP's can have some sort of colored box... something to give it contrast to the responses. Maybe add a little extra padding before and after each [thread?]. Also, the OP avatars need to be larger. They are too similarly sized to the response avatars.