Spellbook

A spellbook + is a book containing runes describing some spell. To attempt to memorise the spell, you must read the spellbook. (This obviously breaks the illiterate conduct.) Pair of lenses are great for reading spellbooks. If the spellbook is too difficult, you will not learn the spell, and instead harmful effects will happen: you might become blind, or you might lose all of your gold.

A cursed spellbook can also cause these harmful effects. Thus in general, never read a cursed spellbook. You can use holy water or a blessed scroll of remove curse to uncurse the spellbook. You could also wield it and read an uncursed scroll of remove curse or cast remove curse.

If you have a blank spellbook and a magic marker, then you can try to write the spellbook of any spell that you know. Dipping a spellbook into water or a fountain will blank it. Spellbooks made blank this way will retain their BUC status.

Note that you will forget spells 20,000 turns after you read the respective spellbook the last time and spellbooks will fade after reading them a few times, making spellbook-management quite important. If you polymorph a spellbook into one which have already studied and learnt, upon reading it again may induce a greater chance of it fading.

Spellbooks versus closed doors
It is possible to drop one or more items in a doorway, with the top item being a brown spellbook. If your tty has color, than a brown spellbook looks like a closed door, because both use a brown plus sign.

If your tty does not have color, you might confuse any spellbook with a closed door.

Either way, attempting to use the [o] command on a doorway that contains a spellbook will fail with, "You see no door there." The [o] command only opens doors, not spellbooks. Furthermore, the spellbook will not stop monsters from crossing the doorway.

Alternatively, use the ';' command to identify the '+'.

Strategy
Do not attempt to read a spellbook unless you know it isn't cursed (easily determined at an altar). Unless you are a wizard, do not attempt to read a spellbook unless you know which level it is (easily determined at the appropriate shop).

Whenever you successfully read a spellbook:
 * Type-name it with the current turn number, so that you will know when you need to rememorize it. You can review the type-names of identified items with the '\' key.
 * Individual-name it '1', or increment the existing number, so you know how many times you have read it.

List of spellbooks
The following is a list of all spellbooks, listed alphabetically by the school of magic they represent and then again alphabetically inside the schools. The number behind each Spellbook is its Level.

Attack

 * spellbook of force bolt (1)
 * spellbook of drain life (2)
 * spellbook of magic missile (2)
 * spellbook of cone of cold (4)
 * spellbook of fireball (4)
 * spellbook of finger of death (7)

Clerical

 * spellbook of protection (1)
 * spellbook of create monster (2)
 * spellbook of remove curse (3)
 * spellbook of create familiar (6)
 * spellbook of turn undead (6)

Divination

 * spellbook of clairvoyance (3)
 * spellbook of detect food (2)
 * spellbook of detect monsters (1)
 * spellbook of detect treasure (4)
 * spellbook of detect unseen (3)
 * spellbook of identify (3)
 * spellbook of light (1)
 * spellbook of magic mapping (5)

Enchantment

 * spellbook of cause fear (3)
 * spellbook of charm monster (3)
 * spellbook of confuse monster (2)
 * spellbook of sleep (1)
 * spellbook of slow monster (2)

Escape

 * spellbook of haste self (3)
 * spellbook of invisibility (4)
 * spellbook of jumping (1)
 * spellbook of levitation (4)
 * spellbook of teleport away (6)

Healing

 * spellbook of cure blindness (2)
 * spellbook of cure sickness (3)
 * spellbook of extra healing (3)
 * spellbook of healing (1)
 * spellbook of restore ability (4)
 * spellbook of stone to flesh (3)

Matter

 * spellbook of cancellation (7)
 * spellbook of dig (5)
 * spellbook of knock (1)
 * spellbook of polymorph (6)
 * spellbook of wizard lock (2)

Other

 * spellbook of blank paper
 * Book of the Dead

Pricing
The base price of a spellbook is 100 per level.

Success rate for Spellbook reading
Your rate of successfully reading a book is:

(Intelligence + 4 + (XPLevel)/2 - 2*(BookLevel)) * 5%

(Note: need to check how lenses affect this)

Only wizards will be warned if this chance is below 100%.

Failure effects of spellbook reading
There is always a chance that the spellbook will crumble to dust.

Spellbooks of level 1/2 will usually only paralyze you for a bit, and maybe teleport you around. Higher-Level Spellbooks are far more dangerous.