That is my experience with english, so it may not apply here, but I think there is no point in worrying about it.
Just remember for natives it can imply both things (whatever that things are) and over time drop your English translation from Japanese. Let your brain do the rest of the job itself.
It just happen to be that knowing if “reading” is noun, verb or adjective is useful only at the start of learning. Knowing it does not matter to me anymore. It is always “reading” regardless.
Making such distinctions helps 3 types of people: total beginner, translators, linguists.
I would go with what is easiest to understand to me with my background (nominal interpretation) but it something else click better with you then I don’t see a problem. Soon enough you should drop that interpretation anyway and start to feel the difference.
You guys clearly are not aware that what you are saying is often nominal sentence, not progressive tense. Nor you spend a second thinking if “reading” is a verb.
In fact grammar is just theory. To this day we don’t know for sure if english has future tense or express it by present tense.
“I will read” - future? or statement about my “will” now.
it is fun debate, and very useful one, but better not go crazy with conclusions xD
Edit:
In this video there is little bit about lacking tenses in the language (chinese, japanese, english as examples) go to 6:40 to listen about lack of “future” in English:
hmm… be looking how fast china grows I can kind of agree English has no future xD