Businesses have been built on reading code. We (Architexa) are one such example, but there are lots more companies trying to help you browse/understand code. One of the older companies in this area is SciTools, which makes the 'Understand' product.
Beyond the above trivial point. The problem with books is that they are often designed to start from only one place (the first chapter). Blogs overcome this by letting you start reading at any post. If there really is a tool that is needed, it is a tool that helps you pick a way to start reading code. It is NOT to give you the one annointed way to read code (from where the writer started writing the code). You sometimes care about the code from the start to finish, or MUCH more likely you would want to read the code in a manner that aligns to your tasks - perhaps by seeing how the code responds to some event (by looking at the event hook), or seeing how the code uses a library or subsystem like the filesystem (by finding dependencies to the appropriate library).
Code reading/understanding is a big problem. And I am biased, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done here.
By the way, I would love your thoughts on what we are doing. Please check the video on our homepage (http://www.architexa.com/) and let me know either here or via e-mail what you think.
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