Would it be possible for these forums to display whether a user has read a particular thread's most recent post, whether all the threads in a particular category have similarily been read?

Most of the forums I visit show threads/categories with unread posts in Bold and read ones in not-bold text.

The only reason I mention is because the length of the recent replies readout is terribly short and threads which might be important tend to drift beyond its scope within a very short amount of time. And checking every single category whenever I suspect I may have missed one is a bit time-consuming.