书

看书 literally means 'look at a book' — that is the everyday act of reading. 读书 leans toward studying: 我在读书 often means 'I'm hitting the books'. If someone says 他在读书, they may just mean he's still in school. So for a novel on the couch, say 我在看书. For textbooks, exams, or talking about student life, 读书 is the natural one. Both are real Chinese — they just point at different things.

个 is the catch-all counting word for people and vague objects. Books have their own: 本, which once pictured a stack of bamboo slips. So it is 一本书, 两本书, 三本书 — always 本. Before a counting word, 'two' is 两, not 二, so 二本书 is wrong too. The same 本 covers notebooks, magazines and dictionaries.

好看 is built on 'pleasing to the eyes'. For people and clothes it means good-looking. For movies and books it stretches into 'good to watch' or 'good to read'. Chinese picks the sense organ, not the word 'good': 好吃 for food, 好听 for music, 好看 for things you look at. So the story line 好书不好看 is a deliberate joke — it reads 好看 in its narrowest sense, where a good book is simply not something you look at. “好电影好看， 好书不好看。” (A good movie is good to watch; a good book is not good to look at.) ── [《好吃也好看》](/read/tasty-and-beautiful#s1)