Die Wortstellung

In English, word order tells you who did what: "the dog bit the man" and "the man bit the dog" are different stories. In Russian the case endings do that job, so word order is free to do something else: it shows what is known and what is new. The neutral order is still subject, verb, object, as in English.

The rule of thumb: new information goes at the end. Where English uses stress or "it is ... who" ("It's Masha who called"), Russian often just moves the word to the end: Звони́ла Ма́ша. Whatever the order, кни́гу is still the thing being read, because of its accusative ending.

Questions without word swapping

English turns "You are a student" into "Are you a student?". Russian keeps the words exactly as they are and changes the melody: Ты студе́нт. (statement) versus Ты студе́нт? (question). In the question the voice jumps up sharply on the stressed syllable of the word you are asking about and drops after it. So Ты студе́нт? asks "Are you a student (or a teacher)?", while Ты студе́нт? with the jump on ты asks "Are you the student?"

Pronouns like to sit early

Unstressed object pronouns usually come before the verb: Я тебя́ люблю́ is the everyday way to say "I love you". Я люблю́ тебя́ is also correct but puts the weight on "you". English speakers tend to copy English order everywhere; it is rarely wrong, but it can sound flat or stress the wrong thing.