This is suggestion for in-game books for either a future TES game or a mod.

I like the idea of in-game books. But with a job, kids, wife, and chores, I find that I'm just not reading many of the books in Skyrim. I find that I have to choose how I spend my in-game time. When it gets right down to it, as much as I'd love to read books, I find that I choose to spend my in-game time adventuring/questing.

So my suggestion is 'cliffs notes' for in-game books. Not separate books, but a way to read a shortened version of a book. Perhaps a menu setting to toggle books between 'full text' and 'short version.'

If there were a shortened version of the books, I'd probably read more of them. Again, if I had more time, I'd read the books as intended, but I just don't have much game time available these days.

The majority of in game books are have been transcribed to the the TES wiki pages. (Links in my sig) They're great reads if you're into the lore of the TES universe.

The great thing about them, is you can access and read the books from anywhere with an internet connection.

Yep. I personally wish they would have spent more time in other areas instead of making in game novels.

Besides I don't read them anymore. I just look for skill books, which are easy to pick out because of their value, read the title, and put it back.

I do however enjoy reading personal journals, notes, treasure maps, etc. I like the potions lists too. It makes me feel like a real alchemist rather than eating everything to see what happens.

Most of the in-game books are already no bigger than real world pamphlets. How could you possibly make them any shorter without destroying them altogether?

But I do have a suggestion of my own: page numbers. Morrowind had them, so why doesn't Skyrim have them?

The majority of books in Skyrim were taken from the previous games, very few are new. They didn't spend a lot of time on writing.

I understand the lack of time, but I can't agree with this idea. Books contain useful information, some of them are funny, some tell moving, emotional tales. A summary is by its nature very limited: it can't evoke the feelings a full version would, it won't stay in your memory. Sure, you could read Dance in Fire as "Decumus Scotti, a clerk from Atrius Building Commission went to Valenwood, saw X, Y and Z, had many adventures, almost died, stroke a great business deal and then came back to Cyrodiil." But then there's no point in opening the book at all...
Which is basically this:

It's better if you go to Imperial Library when you have a little more time and read the books there. Alternatively, you could download that tablet application which will let you read on the go even without Internet.

This.

I don't like Cliff's Notes for anything in real life, and I strongly disapprove of them in a game where the books are only a few pages long.

Like others said, the books are already very short. They're the equivalent of other games' codex entries. So, NO. I want more, not less.

I rarely read the books (except for journals and notes) while I'm playing. I'll remember the titles and read them on the wiki or from my e-reader later on. It often adds to a scene or setting if you read them in their context, but practically speaking I want to get on with killing all the things, questing, etc.

I consider collecting books to be an adventure in itself. Once I have all the books in a set I take a few minutes to read through them. Even the longer series' don't take more than a few minutes to read through. Many times I've had an "Aha!" moment when a book gave greater meaning to something I had just done. OP, I have the same time limitations as you. Sometimes taking a break from dungeon diving is very rewarding, though. Otherwise, I feel like I'm rushing through the game and not really getting the full experience.

If you want to know what's in the books, read them. In a game that many will spend hundreds if not thousands of hours, ten of fifteen minutes to read a couple books doesn't seem like much.

As someone else said, there isn't any point in cliff's notes for most of the books. You won't get what the story intends to evoke if you only read an outline.

You misunderstand, i don't want to take away anything. My idea is to simply have a UI option that would have books read with a short or full version. So if you personally want books as they are, they would remain so.

Some of you dismiss the reality of the lack of time people like myself have. That's fine and I know you won't be persuaded by my arguments. That said, I see no downside of shortened versions of books if every player has the option to keep the full version of texts as they are.

Back before a lot of you were even alive, I was mapping Wizardry 1 dungeons on graph paper. I really enjoyed that kind of thing as nerdy as it was. But if I had to invest time mapping dungeons today, I'd have to pass on such a game - not that I don't enjoy it or that I'm not up the challenge, but I just don't have the time - literally. So please believe me when I tell you that this isn't about laziness or not appreciating lore. If I had more time, I would spend the extra few minutes to read the books during each play session. But in the limited time I have I'd rather do some quests, explore a cave, and tinker around crafting things.

But just to drive my point home, the time I have taken to review this post up to this point and respond has eaten up the 10 or 15 minutes I could have played skyrim. I play Skyrim in thousands of small chunks of time. It took me over 4 years to totally finish Oblivion (main quests, side quests, dlc, and SI)... and in all that time I read very few books for this same reason.


I disagree. If Moby dike and The Great Gatsby can have cliff notes, the stories in Skyrim can too.

People like you need to sthu. That's what causes the dumbing down of games. If they take them out do you really think they'll spend the time making more content. No. It'll be one less thing they have to work on, one less thing we get to do in the game, and they save production time meaning more profit for less work. If you don't like the books don't read them. Some of us really enjoy those parts of the game. The've already removed enough stuff to satisfy the action oriented crowd. Please let us keep the few remaining rpg elements that are actually rpg elements.

Hasn't fast travel made the game easy and noobish enough? Now you want to baby up the "Option" of Reading?!?! READING?!?!?!!!

That would mean writers spending time writing synopses when they could be writing quests and books.

That's true. But more players may understand the lore better. That can create a brand following and lead to future sales. So it could be worth it.

Your rush to rage shows you didn't read the post.

Excellent choice of works, since neither of these books would be understood by anyone who just read the Cliff's Notes for them.

Seriously. Can you imagine someone trying to understand a work like "The Great Gatsby" from a plot summary?

Most stories are so short, I think the ones we have now ARE the cliff notes and Bethesda could do better by providing an extended version.

A good novel takes years to write. I'm happy with them keeping the books shorter so we can have a decent number of them in the world.

Well, most books are no longer than 4-6 pages, some even shorter.

While I understand your problem with time management, a better opyion would be the ability to 'export' all the books found in a game in a pdf format so that they can be read on a mobile device

Do a forum search..... you can get all the books on Kindle (or other readers) for free.

Then as you play jot down the books titles that you run into and look them up at your leasure on Kindle version.