This guide is copied from the Torn forum and made by Andyman. I copied it, just so people can read it here.
Books are obtained through being a Subscriber (common), as mission credit rewards (uncommon), and through city item finds (extremely rare)
You can only read one book at a time, you cannot sell or trade books, and the books remain in your inventory once read.
Note that books take 31 days to complete and there is a merit associated with reading 10 books. This effectively makes the merit (and any future merits) associated with reading books time-gated, so books such as "Making Friends, Enemies, and Cakes" should be prioritized when you have no plans to read another book for 31 days for no other reason than to increase your "books read" stat.
A risk many players do not consider is that being in a faction that gets dirty bombed while you are NOT wearing a Hazmat Suit can absolutely wreck your book bonus. Upon being in a faction that gets dirty bombed, your energy/nerve/happiness all get sapped, your training gets stunted from being unrevivable in the hospital for about 2 days, your attacking effectiveness is ruined for upwards of a week from radiation sickness, all the organized crimes are cancelled, you may lose faction specials such as Voracity/Steadfast/Tolerance from the huge respect loss, you're locked into the faction for a few days, etc. That said, you should consider wearing a Hazmat Suit as extra insurance when reading a few of the best-books. (Borrow/rent one if you have to)
Keep in mind that using several of the books in the most efficient manner possible may require you to work for another company and be reliant on the company to maintain 10-star status over the 31 consecutive days you're reading the book. Several of the books also rely on your faction to have a few faction bonus branches (namely Voracity and Steadfast) unlocked and active for those 31 consecutive days you're reading the book.
Some books require a substantial amount of pre-planning and time to build up job points, drug addiction points, accumulate +$1B worth of premium boosters, have a stat reach a certain level, line up with a scheduled Torn event or contest, etc. Generally speaking, I recommend spending at least 5 days "practicing your routine" and working out the kinks before actually reading the book.
Books, and their respective bonus, can only be used one time, with the slight exception of the Memories and Mammaries book that effectively extends the bonus from the last-used book an additional 31 days. That said, you should have a strategy in mind before reading a book!
Below is a list of my recommended strategy for reading each book:
| Book Title | Book Bonus | Andyman's Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Brawn Over Brains | Increases strength by 5% up to 10,000,000 upon completion. | I would wait until you hit 200,000,000 strength before using this book. You don't want to use it while you have like 20,000 strength because you'll only get 1,000 strength upon finishing the book! |
| Time Is In The Mind | Increases speed by 5% up to 10,000,000 upon completion. | I would wait until you hit 200,000,000 speed before using this book. You don't want to use it while you have like 20,000 speed because you'll only get 1,000 speed upon finishing the book! |
| Keeping Your Face Handsome | Increases defense by 5% up to 10,000,000 upon completion. | I would wait until you hit 200,000,000 defense before using this book. You don't want to use it while you have like 20,000 defense because you'll only get 1,000 defense upon finishing the book! |
| A Job For Your Hands | Increases dexterity by 5% up to 10,000,000 upon completion. | I would wait until you hit 200,000,000 dexterity before using this book. You don't want to use it while you have like 20,000 dexterity because you'll only get 1,000 dexterity upon finishing the book! |
| Working 9 Til 5 | Increases all working stats by 5% up to 2,500 each upon completion. | I highly recommend waiting until you have 50,000 Manual, Intelligence, and Endurance before using this book. |
| Making Friends, Enemies, And Cakes | Increases blacklist & friend list capacity by 100 upon completion. | There is no bad time to use this book. |
| High School For Adults | Provides a free merit reset upon completion. | There is no bad time to use this book, the reset simply gets added to your points building screen and stacks with other free resets you may have (such as the Christmas gift or mugging-change reset) |
| Milk Yourself Sober | Removes a substantial amount of drug addiction upon completion. | I'm unsure if any player has studied exactly how many drug addiction points are negated upon finishing this book. If you are still completing educations, you might consider getting a job in a 10-star Nightclub to ensure you can rack-up a large addiction % without interfering with your education course. I also recommend waiting to use this book until you are reasonably certain you will be able to take at least 85 Xanax over the proceeding 31 days. I also recommend building up several xanax-worth of addiction prior (maybe -5%?) before starting this book to ensure you are squeezing allllll the juice out of this lemon. Note: After you get so much addiction, you have a chance to hospitlize yourself when trying to train in the gym, which is good for using medical items for the med-items used merit. That said, you should not plan to train without drug cooldown for the last week or so of using this book; but attack/war/mug with that natural energy instead. |
| Fight Like An Asshole | Provides a passive 25% bonus to all stats for 31 days. | This book should be saved for when you are warring for a long period of time, for the Dog Tags competition, or when you are power-leveling against higher level/stat targets. Note: This book works best for players with relatively balanced battlestats and stacks very nicely with Vicodin and the 10-star Music Store special. |
| Mind Over Matter | Provides a passive 100% bonus to Strength for 31 days. | This book should be saved for when you are warring for a long period of time or for when you are power-leveling against targets with relatively high defense. Note: For merit chasers, I recommend saving this book as a hedge against future changes made to how damage is calculated. It's entirely possible that strength carries heavier weight in determining damage output in the future, in which case this book may be extremely valuable (and possibily even a requirement) to unlock future high-damage merits. |
| No Shame No Pain | Provides a passive 100% bonus to Defense for 31 days. | This book should be saved for when you are warring for a long period of time or for when you are leveling-up weapon experience against large targets. |
| Run Like The Wind | Provides a passive 100% bonus to Speed for 31 days. | This book should be saved for when you are warring for a long period of time or when you are using low-accuracy weapons such as the Rheinmetal MG3 or Dual SMGs. |
| Weaseling Out Of Trouble | Provides a passive 100% bonus to Dexterity for 31 days. | This book should be saved for when you are warring for a long period of time. Note: You can suddenly become EXTREMELY slippery when using this book in combination with Flash Grenades and Tyrosine. |
| Get Hard Or Go Home | Increases all gym gains by 20% for 31 days. | You should make sure your faction steadfast specials are going to be unlocked for 31 days and that you have the MCS dividend benefit block. There are several different options for maximizing the use out of this book. Technically, being in a 10-star farm with ~2,800 job points stacked up for an additional 700 energy allocated per day for those 31 days to train while using Strippograms/Poison Mistletoes/Amusement Park Special is probably going to be the highest yielding stat-gain-per-day; however, the cost to do so would be asinine and the opportunity cost of being in a farm getting paid diddly, gaining low work stats, and not having a job special for +9 months makes doing this a relatively bad idea. I typically recommend being in a ladies strip club for training defense, gentlemen's strip club for training dexterity, or a fitness center for training strength and speed. (If you can manage to obtain/rent Sports Sneakers, that would be ideal for training speed) You should have +120 Feathery Hotel Coupons stacked up for use when reading this book in one of these companies. If you have a large amount of cash that you want to dedicate toward training; a solid secondary option is to join a 10-star restaurant for about 9 months prior to reading this book and train/attack with energy cans the whole time, and then use five hundred +30 energy cans (X-Mass or Taurine Elite) with faction Voracity specials active while also utilizing the "Free Meals" job special with your restaraunt job points while this book is active. Note: You should plan to take at least 85 Xanax during these 31 days and utilize Strippograms or fly to rehab to maintain high levels of happiness. |
| Gym Grunting - Shouting To Success | Increases Strength gym gains by 30% for 31 days. | I typically recommend working in a Fitness Center while training on this book and taking +120 Feather Hotel Coupons over the 31 day period. You should have the MCS dividend block. You should plan to take at least 85 Xanax during these 31 days and utilize Strippograms or fly to rehab to maintain high levels of happiness if you overdose. |
| Self Defence In The Workplace | Increases Defense gym gains by 30% for 31 days. | I highly recommend working in a Ladies Strip Club while training on this book and taking +120 Feather Hotel Coupons over the 31 day period. You should have the MCS dividend block. You should plan to take at least 85 Xanax during these 31 days and utilize Strippograms or fly to rehab to maintain high levels of happiness if you overdose. |
| Speed 3 - The Rejected Script | Increases Speed gym gains by 30% for 31 days. | Obtain Sports Sneakers if possible! I typically recommend working in a Fitness Center while training on this book and taking +120 Feather Hotel Coupons over the 31 day period. You should have the MCS dividend block. You should plan to take at least 85 Xanax during these 31 days and utilize Strippograms or fly to rehab to maintain high levels of happiness if you overdose. |
| Limbo Lovers 101 | Increases Dexterity gym gains by 30% for 31 days. | I highly recommend working in a Gentlemen's Strip Club while training on this book and taking +120 Feather Hotel Coupons over the 31 day period. You should have the MCS dividend block. You should plan to take at least 85 Xanax during these 31 days and utilize Strippograms or fly to rehab to maintain high levels of happiness if you overdose. |
| The Hamburglar's Guide To Crime | Increases crime skill & crime experience gain by 25% for 31 days. | I recommend doing straight warehouse arsons while reading this book. It stacks very nicely with the 10-star pub special (nerve) and faction voracity and criminality specials. If you choose to read this book to focus on your nerve, I recommend reading the book either in August to take advantage of "International Beer Day" where beer items are 5x more effective or March to take advantage of the boosted alcohol from the St. Patrick's day event |
| What Are Old Folk Good For Anyway? | Increases all EXP gain by 25% for 31 days. | This book should be used in conjunction with a large span of time where you are attacking and leaving higher level players. In the current attacking system, you should use this book when farming respect from high-level wall sluts. NOTE: Generally speaking, leveling up 25% faster for 31 days is not going to magically make you a punching bag. You should level up whenever possible to gain life and merits. |
| Medical Degree Schmedical Degree | Decreases all hospital times by 50% for 31 days. | Fairly useful during war and weeks-long attacking competitions such as elimination and dog tags. It is also VERY useful for players without a Hazmat suit who are anticipating to be dirty bombed more than once in a 31 day period! |
| No More Soap On A Rope | Decreases all jail times by 50% for 31 days. | This book is fairly underwhelming given how commonplace busting is. If you are doing crimes that have a high jail-rate (drug crimes, hacking, pawn shop) this book can be moderately useful to increase your likelihood of getting busted (or bailed) faster. |
| Mailing Yourself Abroad | Decreases all travel times by 25% for 31 days. | This book is useful for flower/plusie/armor runners and players hunting in South Africa. July is a good month to use this book to capitalize on the 5x hunting skill gain from the hunting event. Higher stat players may find this book incredibly useful for mugging players who attempt to travel overseas immediately after having a large dollar value item purchased from their bazaar. (You can beat them there and nail them when their wheels touch the runway) Consider joining a Lingerie Store while reading this book if you're very active. |
| Smuggling For Beginners | Increases travel items by 10 for 31 days. | This book is useful for flower/plushie/armor runners. It stacks nicely with certain job specials such as the specials a player would find from working in a 10-star Cruise Line or Lingerie Store. (Be sure to have a large suitcase in your item inventory!) September is a good time to read this book to capitalize on World Tourism Day. |
| Stealthy Stealing of Underwear | Guaranteed stealth for the next 31 days. | This book is useful for weeks-long events such as Dog Tags and Elimination as well as avoiding retaliations during war, especially while using non-stealthy weapons. It is also a great book to use to hedge against the release of future stealth-hit merits. Be sure your settings have stealth set to "on." |
| Shawshank Sure Ain't For Me! | Large jail bust & escape boost for the next 31 days. | It can make sense to join a 10-star Law Firm before reading this book and to get on a Political Assassination team while you're carrying out your bust-fest. Being in a faction with high criminality trees unlocked will help immensely in terms of increasing bust chance and decreasing the amount of nerve you go through per bust. If you're joining a Law Firm, you should be a few days into a Political Assassination crime PRIOR to reading this book to maximize your chances of getting 4 PAs completed before the 31 days expires on the book and you start looking for another job as opposed to just 3 PAs. (Note: It takes 8 days to plan a PA) Be sure to communicate this to your faction's organized crime leader and your PA teammates to ensure they are aware so that no one travels/cancels PAs to guest in another faction. |
| Ignorance Is Bliss | Happiness can regenerate above maximum for 31 days | This book is amazing to train uncapped battlestats with (below 50,000,000) due to how happiness influences the gym gains rate. It's also an easy way to get the 99,999 Ecstatic merit. I recommend saving this book until you can find a trusted-dedicated noob player who is actively "happy jumping" and charge that dedicated noob a lot of money upfront to coordinate stealing huge gobs of your happy with consecutive poison mistletoes after using ecstasy. Dedicated noobs are rare, but they do exist! It's especially true for returning (restarting) players looking to set records such as "first player under X days at 100,000,000 balanced stats" or "first player with over Y stats at 100 days." In theory, it would be possible to have that noob steal a huge amount of your happy and use both their booster cooldown AND their drug cooldown for energy if you were quick enough with the Pink MAC10 and supplemented the happiness transfer with some strippograms and Amusement park specials. Oh, and for the love of almighty Chedburn, DO NOT SAY YOU ARE READING THIS BOOK IN THE FORUMS to avoid having your happiness get trashed by trolls hitting you with Oil Embargos, sending Horses Heads, Christmas Crackers, using Poison Mistletoes, etc. |
| Winking To Win | Doubles contract credit and money rewards for 31 days. | I would hold onto this book until additional mission-givers come out. (Amanda = new NPC in progress, for example) |
| Finders Keepers | Drastically increases city item spawns for 31 days. | January is a good time to read this book as it coincides with Awareness week. Technically, it stacks with awareness derived from education and from job specials such as the Fireworks Stand and Zoo... but it's ultimately a crap shoot! Most players tend to find at least one good item. (Usually a single stat enhancer, a Cesium-137, an Egyptian Amulet, etc.) |
| Hot Turkey | Gain no drug addiction 31 days. | There's no bad time to use this book, just be sure you are going to be able to use +85 Xanax in the 31 days for which you are using it. The book can also be helpful for guesting in factions without the toleration faction special active. It's usually best to build up to ~5% addiction prior to reading this book to maximize your use of natural decay to save on rehab. |
| Higher Daddy, Higher! | Provides +20% energy regeneration for 31 days. | Fairly useful during war and weeks-long attacking competitions such as elimination and dog tags. If you're getting ready to have a kid in real life, this is a wonderful book to use because you're probably going to be awake and on Torn at 2AM anyway. |
| The Real Dutch Courage | Doubles nerve regeneration for 31 days. | I recommend holding off on using this book until Crimes 2.0 is released, it may prove to be fairly valuable if there are crimes that involve using a lot of nerve in a short amount of time. If you do use it, I recommend bumping up your nerve bar size with merits and joining a 10-star pub to take advantage of the increased nerve bar. Make sure your faction voracity specials are going to be active for 31 days before using this book. |
| Because I'm Happy - The Pharrell Story | Doubles happiness regeneration for 31 days. | This book is fairly underwhelming given how easy it is to replace happiness by simply rehabbing one time or using items such as the Strippogram and Poison Mistletoe. That said, it technically is helpful for training uncapped stats (under 50,000,000) while training without Feathery Hotel Coupons. |
| No More Sick Days | Doubles life regeneration for 31 days. | Fairly useful during war and weeks-long attacking competitions such as elimination and dog tags where revives are abundant and targets are tighter than usual. The special also stacks nicely with the additional life regeneration from the restaurant, meat warehouse, and fitness center. |
| Duke - My Story | Duke will occasionally retaliate against your attackers for 31 days. | This book has the potential to be extremely powerful for defending territory walls, but I haven't had a chance to study how often the Duke retaliation takes place nor am I aware of anyone who has studied it thoroughly. |
| Self Control Is For Losers | Decreases all consumable cooldowns by 50% for 31 days. | This book essentially allows a player to strategically use large amounts of energy/nerve at once which can be nice for training uncapped stats in combination with special items such as the Poison Mistletoe/Strippogram or amusement park special. It stacks very nicely with the 10-star restaurant special (energy) 10-star pub special (nerve) and faction voracity specials. Keep in mind FHCs are NOT consumables. Consumables are candy, energy drinks, alcohol; not hotel stays! |
| Going Back For More | Decreases all medical cooldowns by 50% for 31 days. | Useful during war, but VERY useful for players without a Hazmat suit who are anticipating to be dirty bombed more than once in a 31 day period! |
| Get Drunk And Lose Dignity | Doubles alcohol effects for 31 days. | I recommend joining a 10-star pub and drinking premium alcohol while reading this book. Make sure your faction voracity specials are going to be active for 31 days before using this book. This is a good book to read in August during "International Beer Day" when beer are 5x more effective, or around St. Patrick's Day to capitalize on the premium alcohol boost. |
| Fuelling Your Way To Failure | Doubles energy drink effects for 31 days. | This is arguably the best book. I highly recommend using this book immediately before reading the Memories and Mammaries book. Read this book in October to coincide with the CaffineCon event. It's best to start reading this book with a 0:00 booster cooldown so you maximize the number of energy cans you use. Get a job in an established 10-star Restaurant 3 days before reading this book. Make sure your faction's Voracity specials are going to be active for the next 62 days... you might consider building relations with another faction with strong Voracity specials and having that faction as a "Plan B faction" to run to in case your primary faction resets the Voracity special. Stock up on 1,000 X-Mass and Taurine Elite beforehand. Note: This book will cost upwards of $3.5B to utilize correctly. (62 days x 16 cans a day + a few extra cans based on your Voracity special = 1,000 cans... which sell for +$3m/each) What you use the massive amount of extra energy on is ultimately up to you. Note that if you're exclusively training you're going to want to use Strippograms, fly to rehab often, or have a friend in an Amusement Park hit you with their job special to keep your happiness up. The EVL stock can help with this as well. I also recommend wearing (renting) a Hazmat suit while reading this book to hedge against the risk of being hit with several hours of inescapable hospital time. If you're training speed, wear (rent) Sports Sneakers. GO WILD AND HAVE FUN! |
| Yes Please Diabetes | Doubles candy effects for 31 days. | This book is fairly underwhelming given how easy it is to replace happiness by simply rehabbing one time or using items such as the Strippogram and Poison Mistletoe. That said, it technically is helpful for training uncapped stats (under 50,000,000) while training without Feathery Hotel Coupons. |
| Ugly Energy | Increases maximum energy (including energy refills) to 250 for 31 days | This book is best utilized in conjunction with Feathery Hotel Coupons and point refills. You should plan to use 124 FHCs to get full utilization out of this book. (Slightly more if you properly saved your booster cooldown and are in a faction with the booster cooldown special over 24:00 unlocked) Be sure to save your point refill from the day prior before reading this book. Generally speaking, there are three routes you can take with this book: 1.) Train with it. 2.) Use the book while in a 10-star Farm to try to increase your place in the Dog Tags or a future weeks-long event that involves focusing on attacking. 3.) Save it until 100,000 chains come out and earn a boat-load of cash for 31 days guesting for factions who are trying to unlock and/or achieve a 100,000 chain. |
| Memories And Mammaries | Takes the same effect from the last used book for 31 days. | Ultimately, the bonus of the book you wish to duplicate is up to you. I highly recommend using this book in conjunction with Fuelling Your Way to Failure with a close 2nd alternative being Ugly Energy. Remember, this only works with the book you LAST used. |
| Brown-nosing The Boss | Greatly increases personal employee effectiveness for 31 days. | It's my understanding that companies are paying upwards of +$8M/day for high-stat players utilizing this book. Obviously, make sure you are employed in a company the full 31 days. Note: Directors are not employees. If you want to use this book on your own company, you should hire a trusted friend to hold the Director position for 31 days while you swap places with that friend. |
| Running Away From Trouble | Guaranteed escape attempt success for 31 days | This book is super useful for getting the 1,000 escapes merit. You can also use this book to earn money via escape-slutting. (Attacking and then running away from a player on purpose can pay ~$500,000 per escape) |