Question: I want to tell someone the following:  

"I bring an e-reader with me on the bus every day so that I have something to do during my commute to work."  

Does the phrase "commute to work" clearly refer to the trip there **and** the trip back from work? Or is it more proper to say "commute to and from work" in order to ensure that it is clear that I mean both directions?

Answer: 
In OP's context, "commute" would normally include both journeys, but since "commuting" in this sense invariably implies "to and from **work**", the explicit mention of "to work" *could* mean only the outward journey.

Having said that, I think it would be a perverse interpretation to automatically assume only the outward journey was intended. But I wouldn't think it was unusual if the utterance went on to *force* that interpretation...

**...so I have something to do during my commute to work, but on the return journey I have a drink in the buffet car with colleagues.**

[Here's](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=commute%20to%20and%20from,commute%20to&year_start=1950&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3) an NGram showing over 110K instances of "commute to", with less than 5K for "commute to and from". By definition 50% of every commuter's journeys are coming home – I seriously doubt they're talking about the outward journey over 95% of the time!
No, it does not clearly refer to the trip both ways. I would understand it to be only the trip to work, or possibly to be unspecific about whether the return trip is included. If you need to be clear on this, you would have to specify that you actually mean both ways.