Hi, just wondering if it is important for the games story to keep all the books I come across or is it ok to sell them once they are read? I know they don’t weigh much and are hardly worth anything but I hate carrying anything unnecessary and I can’t afford a house yet.

Cheers.

Mostly you can sell them but certain books will show up later in quests. It's a risk you take. If you buy a house, it's worth it to fill the shelves just in case. You can safely sell used skill books and duplicate spell books.

You can get a house quite early on in the game. Mostly, if you get rid of books now they'll be easy to re-aquire later on in the game, should you want to. Books seem pretty secure in my houses. After I ran out of bookcases I just started dumping them on the floor, and they never seem to dissapear. My house-[censored] tends to trip on them often as he cant actually see his feet over his ridiculously over-inflated pectorals, but that's about the extent of the book drama in beks house.
As said, spell books you've allready learned the spells of are okay to get rid of as you'll find that most vendors sell spare copies of the common ones.

Some quest related books cannot be removed from your inv. it's annoying.
I liked Dragon Age's quest system where it listed the inv items associated with each quest so at least you knew why you had something and where/when to use it.

When you get a house I'd advise against using the bookcases unless you dont want to see your books again. Bookcases have a nasty habbit of not working or even eating your entire book collection. Best to store them in a cupboard or stack them in corners.

CCNA Note This was fixed in Patch 1.2/1.3. It did not fix shelves that had already thrown your books into the void, but newly placed books are just fine.

Yup, I only put books in a cupboard or a trunk. I collect 1 of every book in the game.

Stupid how they have 2 shelves in a bookcase but you can only put like 12 books or however many and it barely even fills 1 shelf. (Whiterun house, I don't have any others yet) I want an awesome library. Not a handful of books here and there.

I started keeping the skill books to read later and see how it possibly teaches me something but then I got bored and sold them. I am trying to collect orc related literature with my orc dude but it's always has to be stolen.

Also some dude in the imperial legion wants a skill book and I swear I've read it and sold it already so I dunno if I can ever get that one back.

You have to activate each shelf separately. The one on the bottom, I have to almost be looking at the floor in front of the book case to use the lower shelf.

There's a handful of books you may want to hold onto if you find them, only because you might be given a fetch quest to acquire a copy at some point. These ones for sure:


There might be a couple more.

Hey thanks for the friendly replies everyone, apart from a follower I'm wondering if anyone has found any other secure storage that's not a house, or perhaps someone could offer a temporary storage solution.

WhooHooo.....just found a thread that details exactly what I'm looking for.

Regards.