i read hackernews via rss.. hundreds of posts per day - i simply don't go through all of them. whenever there's nothing interesting to read, i open it up and check what titles are interesting and start reading
The way I catch up with HN posts after a few days away is hckr news (http://hckrnews.com/). It's stress free, and I can shorten the list to 10 or 20 top items per day. Then if I have time I'll expand to the top 50% list and scan for anything interesting.
I don't know if you use Twitter but there are some great (unofficial) HN related accounts on there. @newsyc100 has all items that get at least 100 votes, for example. I also like @hnfirehose for the real time experience.