Sometimes I pick up a book

Weapon drawn, spell ready, or fist raised to pick up a book without reading. To steal a book, you also need to be sneaky.

This is Mardoxx and CDCooley's recreation of Sometimes Pick Up Books, giving you the option to pick up or steal books without reading them.

Weapon drawn, spell ready, or fist raised to pick up a book without reading. To steal a book, you also need to be sneaky.

How to read, read or steal books

In Skyrim, when you activate a book, the game will often force you to read it before you can pick it up. (Although spell books and some quest-related notes and books are exceptions to this rule.) This mod does not change that default action when you are not using a weapon, have no magic ready, or have a fist raised.

If a weapon is indeed drawn, a magic trick is prepared, or a fist is raised, the book will not be opened for reading. What actually happens depends on the book and whether you're sneaking around too.

If you're still sneaky, the book will be added directly to your inventory. If the book is considered removed, the normal theft alarm system will be activated. (Hopefully your stealth skills are high enough that you won't get caught.)

If you're not sneaky, the book will be added directly to your inventory only if you don't think it was stolen. If you steal it, you get the glitch sound effect and can then drop the weapon/spell/fist and read normally, or go into stealth mode and steal it.

limitations and annoyances

Since this mod doesn't use SKSE, some features of the original mod won't work, and others won't work, so there are no configuration options here.

The activation prompt does not change to "Accept" or "Steal". You need to remember that you can only avoid reading by raising your hand, and you can only steal books by sneaking.

Notes and books that need to be read can be recorded by activating them in the game world (rather than reading them from the inventory) to advance the quest. In every case so far, I've found that if you pick up one of the notes or books, you can put it back into the game world and activate it to update the mission. However, I strongly recommend that you save periodically, just in case you pick up a book and later realize that you interrupted the quest by not reading it right away as the quest creator intended.

The set of conditions used to determine whether picking up a book will be stolen (or whether you can't pick up the book at all) is not as reliable as the SKSE feature used by the original mod. You may be allowed to take actions you shouldn't be taking, or you should be allowed to take appropriate actions. Hopefully these situations are rare. The most likely scenario is that at your friend's house, the game may allow taking low-value books but count them as theft.

Known Mod Conflicts

This will conflict with Alaebasta's Pick Up Books - Simple SE, as both mods do roughly the same thing, but in slightly different ways. Choose your favorite mod, but only one.

————————————————————————————————

This rebuild of "Sometimes Pick Up Books" by Mardoxx and CDCooley gives you the option to take or steal books without reading them.

Draw a weapon, ready a spell, or raise your fists to pick up a book without reading it. To steal a book you'll need to be sneaking too.

How to Read, Take, or Steal books

In Skyrim when you activate a book the game usually forces you to read it before you can pick it up. (Although spell books and a few quest related notes and books are an exception to that rule.) This mod doesn't change that default action when you don't have a weapon drawn, magic readied, or fists raised.

If you do have your weapon drawn, magic readied, or fists raised then the book will not be opened for reading. What does happen depends on the book and whether you are also sneaking.

If you are also sneaking, the book will be added directly to your inventory. If taking the book would be considered stealing the normal theft alarm system will be activated. (Hopefully your sneak ski …