Fallout: New Vegas skill books

Unique (and/or Quest) books
These books and their locations are related to quests are unique or both. You can find a total of 3 Quest books in New Vegas.

Skill books
Reading a skill book permanently raises the corresponding skill by three points (four if you've taken the Comprehension perk). There are 4 books for each skill except Science for which a 5th book may be awarded depending how the quest That Lucky Old Sun is completed. There are a total of 53 skill books in New Vegas. The skill books are the same as the books from Fallout 3 (with the exception of "The Wasteland Survival Guide," originally a reward from the completion of the associated Fallout 3 quest, which attributes to the newly added "Survival" skill).

Types

 * See That Lucky Old Sun for details on obtaining #5; there are only 4 Big Books of Science placed in the game world.

Skill magazines

 * Skill magazines temporarily raise the corresponding skill by ten points (twenty with Comprehension), but wear off after a while (longer with Retention). There are a total of 213 skill magazines placed in permanent locations in New Vegas, however they can be found randomly and for sale on merchants providing unlimited numbers of them. They are much more common than skill books.


 * These skill magazines can only be used one at a time, even when trying to use more than one of the same magazine. Example: using two 'Meeting People' magazines will still only increase your Speech skill by ten points (twenty with Comprehension) rather than doubling the effect.

Skill magazines include:


 * Boxing Times (Unarmed)
 * Fixin' Things (Repair)
 * Future Weapons Today (Energy weapons)
 * Lad's Life (Survival)
 * ¡La Fantoma! (Sneak)
 * Locksmith's Reader (Lockpick)
 * Meeting People (Speech)
 * Milsurp Review (Guns)
 * Patriot's Cookbook (Explosives)
 * Programmer's Digest (Science)
 * Salesman Weekly (Barter)
 * Tales of Chivalrie (Melee)
 * Today's Physician (Medicine)
 * True Police Stories (Critical)

Locations

 * Can be found most prominently in Mailboxes.
 * Most merchants often carry a few assorted magazines in their inventory.