Books (Skyrim)



Books are items that can be found and purchased in.

The vast collection of books can grant quests, increase specific skills, or update the world map. Other books vary from simple stories, to letters, notes, and journals that assist in quests and snippets of lore that help players become more familiar with the culture and history of Tamriel.

Types
There are eight-hundred twenty item codes corresponding to books in. These can be broken down into the following categories:
 * Skill Books: books which will increase a specific skill by one level.
 * Spell Tomes: books which teach a spell and are destroyed once read.
 * Quest Books: books that add a quest to the player's journal.
 * /Journals/: journals of various characters found throughout Skyrim and Solstheim, giving information about them or what they have been doing.
 * /Letters/: letters and notes found throughout Skyrim and Solstheim.
 * /Recipes/: notes that contain potion or poison recipes.
 * Black Books: books that, if read in Solstheim, will take the Dragonborn to Hermaeus Mora's realm of Apocrypha.
 * Lore Books: books that describe historical tales in the form of either folklore, or actual documentation of events in Tamrielic Lore and may be used in a quest.

Available books
The following is a list of books found in, , and. This list does not include any spell tomes, recipes, journals or letters.

Other Types

 * Treasure Maps, ten named variants, note form
 * Elder Scroll
 * Black Books
 * Master Illusion Text, four variants
 * Oghma Infinium
 * Power of the Elements, five variants, one being a spell tome, what the Master Illusion Texts are converted to at the end of the Illusion Ritual Spell, only obtainable through console
 * Shalidor's Insights
 * Various developer testing books, obtainable only through console, disappear when dropped or placed in a container

Bugs

 * Using a spell such as blizzard can glitch out anything in cases including books, armor, weapons, etc. Any high explosive spell should work (needs more testing, Blizzard tested on PS3). Blizzard doesn't harm non-hostile NPCs making it safe to use in populated areas.
 * A spell tome can be copied by placing the book on the bookshelf, then exiting out the bookshelf dialog, then quickly clicking the place the book ends up, then reading the book when it is on the shelf, then exiting. After that, every time one activates the book shelf the book will end up there.
 * The Oghma Infinium can be read over if done in a certain order. The entire exploit is described here.
 * Each time this exploit is used, the maximum book capacity of the bookshelf is increased by one. This will not change the amount that is shown on the shelf, but the ones that are not shown will still show up in the bookshelf menu.
 * This bug was patched in the 1.9 update for.
 * Gallus's Encoded Journal may get stuck in the inventory as a quest item. To fix this, get caught and go to jail, break out and when the Dragonborn retrieves their items, do not take the journal.
 * Bookshelves in any owned house in Skyrim may be inaccessible despite being full of books. None of the books are selectable despite the titles appearing, and the shelves cannot be opened, either. This happens whenever an attempt is made to place more books on a shelf than will fit. For example, if the caption says 10 of 10 books are on the shelf, trying to place an eleventh locks the shelf up and all books become inaccessible.