First off I played oblivion for 500+ hours. Played it vanilla on the 360, then got a PC, played it more vanilla then modded the [censored] out of it. I never read a book, not once in the whole game (unless it was super short lol). But Ive been hearing from people that books are a pretty large part of the game, often relating to real people/places and sometimes treasure/quests.
So in skyrim I have been saving every book I find to build a nice library, and so far I have 2 bookshelves filled in whiterun and a bunch in a chest. I read one book tonight, worth 70 septims, titled "the locked room". Let me just say I was not expecting that, quite a short story filled with emotion, twists, a good build up to a good climix. Ive read a few others, but that one really stood out. Im excited to read the rest of my library

Anyway, if your playing skyrim and have completely ignored books you are missing a huge part of the culture and the game.