If you only need glasses for reading, you do not need progressive lenses. You need reading glasses, which you will only wear when you are reading.
You can just buy an over-the-counter set of glasses ($15) with your prescription. Or you can have a fancier (lighter or more stylish) pair made, but they will be called single-vision lenses (meaning that they have a single correction factor per eye).
Optometrists prefer you to get the most expensive lens option though their shop. Reading glasses are the cheapest. Single visions are the next cheapest. They have a higher profit margin on progressive lenses, multi-focal lenses, bifocals, etc. They also have a nice profit margin on coatings for anti-reflection or transition lenses. (Contact lenses too!)
I recommend you do the following:
1. Visit your optometrist's office and ask for a copy of your eyeglasses prescription. By law (in the US), they must give this to you at the end of the exam. You should always request this, at every visit, as you have paid for it.
2. If you got your lenses at the optometrist, tell them that they simply are not working for you. Usually, if it has been a few weeks to a month, they will remake your lenses in a different option at no cost to you. (This is generally the only advantage of getting your lenses at your optometrist.)
3. Read online about how your prescription works and figure out if you can get by with a simple set of cheap reading glasses. (You can do this if your eyes both require the same diopter correction value.)
4. Go to a drug store and try out cheap reading glasses.
Good luck. Look at the bright side, some people need glasses for both distance and reading!