读书

On its own, 读书 means the activity of reading, the same way English says 'reading'. But it also does a second job that English hands to separate words like 'study' or 'enroll'. So 他在北大读书 means he is a student at Peking University, not that he is holding a book there. Context decides, and school talk tends to win whenever a school or city sits in front of it. Asking 你在哪儿读书 is the normal way to ask someone where they study.

看书 is the neutral one: eyes on pages, phone screen, menu, anything with words on it. 读书 leans heavier and suggests reading aloud, reciting, or studying something properly. A student reading a textbook out loud in class is 读书. Someone skimming a comic on the subway is 看书. When you are stuck, 看书 is the safer default for casual reading.

读书 is a package deal, with the object 书 baked right into the word. That means you cannot bolt a second object onto it, whether that object is a title or one specific book. 我在读书《哈利波特》 sounds like 'I read-books Harry Potter.' Naming the book means dropping 书 and putting 读 straight in front of the title.

Duration phrases in Chinese skip the word 'for' entirely; the length simply follows the verb. So 读书一小时 is a complete, natural sentence with nothing missing. You can also split 读书 and park the hour inside it as 读一个小时的书. Both work in daily speech, though the split version sounds slightly more careful or written. “工作两三年， 休息四五天， 读书一小时， 吃饭五分钟。” (Work for two or three years, rest for four or five days, read for an hour, eat for five minutes.) ── [《一二三（2）》](/read/counting-days-rhymes#s6)