The work aims to study the potential guiding role of experiential and receptive reading in the development of past book design, clarify their concepts and connotations and, and on this basis, propose two routes for the design of book reading experiences. Desktop research and case studies were conducted to compare the internal divide between current book design theory and practice. The divide was found to be caused by two reading forms of readers. The ways in which design works could meet these two reading needs were further discussed. The body, the book, and the spatio-temporal environment were the elements that enabled experiential reading to occur; graphic symbolic texts and spatial symbolic texts were the objects of understanding for receptive reading. The enhancement of the reading experience required a combination of these aspects according to the characteristics of different texts. Experiential reading and receptive reading provide the real starting point and direction for the design of the book reading experience, which are "serving the reader from experiential reading" and "expressing to the reader from receptive reading" respectively.