Book 'Em is an evolution of my (now obsolete) Something About Books mod.  What's the difference, you ask?  Compatibility.  Through the magic of SKSE plugins I was able to recreate the mod without making any edits to vanilla assets.  Therefore, "Book 'Em" should be compatible with most mods that add books and spell tomes.  I have tested with a few mods such as Book Covers Skyrim, Lost Library, Legacy of the Dragonborn, Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim and SXP (Redone)).

Many of you may notice that many of the features of Book 'Em are similar to other mods.  This is true.  I drew much of my inspiration from other book mods such as Unread Books Glow, Reading Is Good and Don't Eat Spell Tomes, and decided to create my own version which combines all those features I loved, added some ideas of my own along with a few features suggested by others.  Many thanks to Parapets for allowing me to use the plugins from Reading Is Good and Don't Eat Spell Tomes.  If you choose to install Book 'Em, do not use those other mods as they will most likely conflict.


What are books?
As far as the game is concerned, books are anything that can be read.  Notes, recipes, journals, common books, skill books, spell tomes and even elder scrolls are all book objects.  This mod is designed to only effect common books, skill books and spell tomes.  Most notes, journals, letters and logs are filtered out by ignoring anything that does not have a weight of 1.0.  Where that fails, I look for book that contains those words in its name.  Even so, there may be some journals that are treated as common books, or some books that are ignored as journals, but these should be minimal. 

Mods that change book weights or names will prevent Book 'Em from working correctly.

Read or pick up?
One of the most annoying things about books you encounter in Skyrim is that you are force to read them before you can take them.  I don't know about you, but if I'm crawling through a cold, dark, draugr infested dungeon, the last thing I'm going to want to do is stop to read "The Lusty Argonian Maid".  Spell tomes are the exception because you can't actually read them.  Through the MCM you can choose your default behavior when you click to activate a book.  Holding the left shift key while activating will perform the opposite behavior.  For example, if your default behavior is to pick up books, then holding the left shift while activating will cause you to read the book.  Note, this does not change the on-screen prompt.  Disabling this feature also disables book glow.

Glow options
Normally when you encounter an object in the game that is owned by an NPC the on-screen prompt will warn you that you are stealing.  This does not happen with books.  You have to read them first and then you will be shown a "Take/Steal" option.  To get around this I have made the books glow if it is steal-able (is that a word?).  Through the MCM you can choose from various colors and brightness options to highlight steal-able books, unread books, skill books and spell tomes.  The stealing color always takes priority.

Common books
Common books are any book that is not a skill book or spell tome.  By default, they do nothing and are often ignored by players, although reading them may yield useful clues or even start a quest.

There are three common book options:
1.  Disabled - Book 'Em will not do anything when reading common books.  This will give you the vanilla behavior.
2.  Earn XP - Reading a common book will provide a random amount of experience toward a skill.  You can chose to a specific skill or have one randomly picked from all the skills or a skill set (warrior, thief, mage), or chose to exclude one of the skill sets.

Added in v2.25
3.  Boost Skills - Each common books read will cause all skills to level a little bit faster.

A couple exceptions worth noting:  The book Oghma Infinium provides its own scripted reward, and the Shalidor's Insights books will not provide any bonus as, according to Urag gro-Shug, they are unreadable by anyone who can not translate them.  That means you.


Skill books
Ahh, skill books.  The very reason I decided to create this mod.  Reading a skill book automatically advances a skill to the next level.  This means reading a Lockpicking skill book at level 15 will be worth anywhere from 1 to 349 XP (depending on your current progress in that skill) but, if your Lockpicking skill is 90 that same book may be worth up to 1917 XP.  This of course encouraged players to try to save skill books for later in the game when they are worth more.

You now have five reward option for skill books:
1.  Disabled - This disables this feature of the mod for a pure vanilla behavior and should allow the use of a different mod for skill books if you so wish.  If you use this option you must also delete/hide the ReadingIsGood.dll file from the mod or else skill books will provide no skill increase when reading them.
2.  Vanilla Plus - A new feature in 2.0.  This will give you the same vanilla behavior while also allowing the use of reading animations.
3.  Earn XP - Reading a skill book will provide a random amount of experience toward the book's skill.  This amount may be affected by standing stones and other perks.
4.  Skill Boost - Similar to activating a guardian stone, skills will level faster based on how many skill books for that particular skill have been read.  How much faster is adjustable in the MCM.  This bonus is not retroactive.  Only skill books that you have read while this option is selected count toward the bonus.  View your progress in the MCM.
5.  Fortify Skill - Added in version 2.10.  Permanently fortify the skill by the specified amount.  This bonus is not retroactive.  Only skill books that you have read while this option is selected count toward the bonus.  View your progress in the MCM.

Added in v2.20
Skill book allocations can be adjusted from the Debugging page of the MCM.  This allows for player's, who may have already read some skill books before installing Book 'Em, to gain the full effect of the mod.  This only applies to adding, removing or transferring books to/from the boost or fortify skill book options.


Spell tomes
Like the vanilla skill book behavior, I've never like that fact that it is so easy for mages to learn new spells.

The three spell tomes options are:
1.  Disabled - This disables this feature of the mod for a pure vanilla behavior and should allow the use of a different mod for spell tomes if you so wish.  If you use this option you must also delete/hide the Don'tEatSpellTomes.dll file from the mod or else spell tomes will do absolutely nothing.
2.  Vanilla Plus - Identical to vanilla except you can use the animation feature and select whether to destroy spell tomes after reading.
3.  Study Spell - You will need to study the spell tomes several times before you learn the spell and can cast it.  How much you learn each study session varies based on the spell difficulty, your level in that magic school and plethora of other options which are now adjustable through the MCM (new to 2.0).  You can only study one spell from each school of magic at any given time and must finish one spell before you can study another spell of the same school.  View the progress tab in the MCM to see what (if any) spell you are currently studying for each school and its progress.

Some new options under Study Spell might need some clarification
Study time:  This is how many in-game hours a study session will last.
Progress scale:
Fixed:  Study time does not effect the amount of progress you earn.
Linear:  Each hour of study time will provide the same amount of progress (more or less depending on your random option).
Progressive:  Each hour of study time will earn progressively less progress than the previous hour and may even go negative.
Recovery time:  This is how much time you will need to recover from a study session before you can study again.
Recovery scale:
Fixed:  Recovery time will always be the same regardless of your study time, or scale.
Linear:  Recovery time is per hour of study time.
Progressive:  Recovery time is for the first hour of study and each additional hour will require more recovery than the previous.

Added in v2.02
Spells learned by studying spell tomes typically have a perk associated with them which is how I determine the spell level and school.  Some mods add spells that don't have a perk attached.  To determine the school I look at the skill associated with the first magic effect of the spell.  This is a compromise as different magic effects may use different skills.  The spell level, however, can not be determined this way so these spells will be treated as Novice level spells.  If the spell school still can not be determined from either of these two methods, then the player will simply learn the spell after studying it.


Animations
Reading skill books or spell tomes can play an idle animation.  You can choose how long the animation plays (real-time) along with how much game time passes during the animation (Study time is used instead if you are studying spell tomes).
There are two animation types, the only difference is how the time passes:
Instant - Plays the animation and then jumps the game time ahead the appropriate number of hours.  You may see a sudden change in lighting and shadow position.
Accelerated - During the animation sequence, game time runs at an accelerated rate giving a more gradual change in lighting and shadows.


Installation
Due to the number and type of changes in 2.0, Book 'Em can not be upgraded from 1.xx
Install with your favorite mod manager.  Book 'Em does not change any game records and should not conflict with any mod, except those that duplicate the same behavior or modify book weights or names, so anywhere in your load order should work.

While I see no reason why you could not add this to an existing game, books that you have already read will not count toward any bonuses provided by this mod, so I highly recommend starting a new game.  If you are adding to an existing game, drop or store all unread books from the player's inventory and then pick them up again.  This will populate the lists necessary for Book 'Em to work properly.


Change log:
v2.25Added a check to make sure study recovery timer expires at the correct time regardless of sleeping/waiting or changes to time scale.
 Added an option to common books which boosts the leveling speed of all skills based on the number of common books read.

v2.24Corrected an error which would cause certain journals to be treated as common books.  Thanks to TheBeastKeeper for pointing this out.

v2.23Experimental functions have been fully tested and are now considered official.
 Disabled unnecessary notification.
 Revised reading idle animation so it can't be interrupted.  Thanks to XivilaiShardae for pointing this out.

v2.22EXPERIMENTAL - Found a new method of determining spell school and level when studying spell tomes.
 Seems to work for perk mods such as Adamant and Vokrii.  Not fully tested as I do not use these mods so relying on user feedback.

v2.21Fixed an issue where if you try to read a book while holding a torch or having a shield equipped, player may get stuck in reading animation.

v2.20Added ability to manually edit skill book allocations in MCM Debugging page.
 Eliminated need for optional SXP (Redone) patch.  Mod now detects if SXP plugin is installed and runs appropriate scripts.

v2.10Apparently the skill boost perk was never actually applied to the player.  Fixed.
 Added Fortify option to skill books.
 Added debugging page to MCM.

v2.03       Corrected a typo in the MCM and fixed code so game stats now update properly

v2.02       Spells that don't have an associated perk can now be studied and learned, so no more error notifications

v2.01       Fixed a bug where notes may give common book reward

v2.0 Due to some of the comments I received, numerous bugs were discovered which prompted me to temporarily suspend this mod page.
Bugs have been fixed (hopefully did not introduce new ones)
New features added
MCM completely redesigned

v1.11       Fixed a bug where journals were not being properly filtered and giving common book rewards

v1.1 Added The Eloquent Reader like behavior to common books.  Only Speechcraft gains experience.
Added options to disable features which should allow the use of other book behavior mods.
Added some randomness if using modifiers for studying spell tomes.
Renamed the Difficulty slider to Magic Proficiency.  Does the same thing but I like the wording better.
Book reading animation returns to the prior camera state (1st or 3rd person).  No longer forces 1st person mode.
Changing the recovery time in the MCM now goes into effect immediately.  You don't have to wait for an existing timer to expire.
Removed some redundant and obsolete code which got carried over from Something About Books.
 
v1.0Initial release


Recommendations
The MCM has been designed for use with the full-screen Wider MCM Menu and Sovngarde Font


My other mods:
Leveled Walking Speed