Reading RPG books

For the past several weeks, I've been reading through RPG books, either dealing with the backlog of books I hadn't gotten around to, or reading the books I received for Christmas. I haven't yet read everything (still lots of FR and Star Wars d20 books to read), but I did manage to deal with the Dungeon magazines I'd built up, finally read Serenity, and have even finished Stormwrack (which was the book I was reading when I moved down here). I'm currently reading "Iron Heroes", which looks like a fun game I'll never play.

I'm told by others that it's quite unusual to actually read the books I buy. I'm led to believe that most people skim them for the good stuff (read: kewl powerz), and then stick them on the shelf. Given the quality of the text, in many cases, I'm not surprised.

RPG books are really dull reads. Especially when a book contains yet another bunch of feats/spells/monsters, who can really be bothered? Frankly, RPGs don't need any more of these things. We've got more than we will ever ever use.

That said, there have been some gems. The Dragon Compendium is excellent. Serenity was a really good read, although I doubt I'll ever play it (I might potentially steal the system, though). The ongoing Age of Worms campaign in Dungeon is really good, too, although not quite to the standard of Shackled City, I think.

As for Iron Heroes, what can I say? It seems fun and evocative, and perhaps a game I would like to run at some point, just for a change. However, reading the book reminds me of one of the great problems of doing a d20 game - you're presenting the same rules I know really well, and have read a dozen times before, but have introduced sufficient changes that I have to at least skim virtually all of the book. Which is a really dull thing to do, and one of the things that most annoyed me about the endless World of Darkness games, wherein the same was true.