Well, OK, Wulf.
Could we then, perhaps, agree on the following behaviour as the most rational and most useful?
- If a book has not been opened yet in Marvin, display no dots at all, and no numeric progess indicator yet (does not make sense for unopened books), and display only the New tag.
- Once a book gets opened for the first time, display the number of dots relative to the approximate overall length of the book (the more dots, the longer the book), with 2 contrasting dot colours (or shapes) indicating the reader's progress inside the book, in addition to the numeric progress indicator.
(To me, there would be little difference between the 2 scenarios, because I typically don't leave books unopened in Marvin for a very long time, if any time at all. I mean, why would I load books into Marvin in the first place, if I never bothered to open them? 
The cloud = Calibre folders, rather than Marvin, is my long-term books repository.)