when powering on, the Touch (and the Glo) always start with flashing blue light and then green. I think yours tried to start but was out of juice, so the power shut off.
As for me, I never have any issue about battery life when pluggin in the wall (and so "charging while reading") I'm an avid reader and with my Touch had to charge it about once in a month (I bought it at the end of november last year). So far I haven't seen the battery life going down