In Facebook, click the "Activity Log" button in the bottom right corner of your cover photo. That's where all activity is sent. From there, the default is for Facebook determines where it is decide where that action is displayed: The Timeline, ticker, news feed, and/or other channels. There is a little white circle on the right of each action where you can choose to force the action to display on the Timeline, leave it at the default (for Facebook to choose), or to never display on the Timeline.
Before your action is approved, it will never display on the Timeline when in the default state because unapproved actions can't be seen by other users. Once approved, it may show in the Timeline. However, read (or other automatic actions such as watch or listen) are less likely than they used to be to show up on a Timeline because they can be very frequent and are 'low value' type actions. They're still good to have, but don't expect every action to post prominently on your user's Timeline. We're working on enhanced action sharing options for the upcoming 5.1 release.
I hope that helps explain, but if you have other questions, just let me know.
Thanks,
Alex