I'm on a quest for the College of Winterhold that requires me to find three books. Well, I am in the room with the books and I'm staring right at them, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to take them. I have changed the hotkeys, but I've tried every one of them and none work. The hotkey listed at the bottom of the screen for "Take" is E, but that doesn't work either. What do I do?

Thanks,
John

i would probably reload your last save

I don't know if this helps, but generally books that are not in a container require you to do two things to "take" them - the first time you click you are just opening the book and reading it, then there is a second click that stores the book in your inventory (the alternative being to put it back down where you found it).

On PC you hit "E" to read the book and then I think it's "E" again to take it with you, otherwise you Tab out of the screen showing you the contents of the book and that puts it back down again.

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/458676-issues-with-skyrim-books/

You must take the book so you open it, then take it again to put it in your inventory. Or if the keys are not working try using a controller if you have one spare. Or switch around the keys to pick things up.

If you can't interact with the books at all, that sounds like a glitch. Try reloading or, if that doesn't work, try using a spell or shout to knock them off their pedestals and maybe then you'll be able to interact with them.

If none of that works, you may have to resort to console commands.

Thanks for the replies! Turns out I needed to rebind the "Activate" key back to E and use that to read/take the book. I was using A for Activate, and I was able to read the books, but pressing A again did nothing.