I think your date is stored as a UNIX timestamp. MySQL has functions to convert this to 'normal' date formats. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/date-and-time-functions.html for more info.

[sql]
SELECT read_mid, FROM_UNIXTIME(read_date) as read_date FROM ibf_topics_read WHERE id = 5160
[/sql]