I'm not sure if this what you're looking for, BklynGiovanna, but here's the way it's usually taught in Italian courses:
"Leggemmo" is the passato remoto; it's generally used for events that happened a long time ago.
"Abbiamo letto" is the passato prossimo, which is used for events that happened more recently, and that were definitely completed in the past. (There's an example coming up.)
You might have also been thinking of "leggevamo", which is the imperfetto. It's used for events in the past which are (or were) ongoing, and also for states of mind, as well as a few other cases. The English equivalent is usually something like "we were reading."
So "We were reading when John woke up" would be "Leggevamo [imperfetto, because it was an ongoing activity] quando John si è svegliato [passato prossimo, because it's a clearly defined event that happened and was completed]."
Obviously, this is a very basic rundown, but does that help?