Regarding Stat-boosting Books (e.g. Life of Alixenus the Great)

[Arcaani]

Can you train an ability to 30 and get for instance 10 Leadership and then read a book to get 11 in a skill?

[Oskatat]

no, i tried it with the char expert, just to see if it works. it doesnt. Neither does a +1 from a book raise a skill above 10

[Arcaani]

Alright. Thanks a bunch, good sir.

Would this imply that having a skill level of 8 in Trade or Tracking and receiving more than 2 in bonuses from your party would be a waste?

[Oskatat]

that i do not know, but i hope it adds after 10

[Berpol]

To my knowledge the cap of 10 is only for the actual skill level, the bonus on party skills still applies.
Though I'm not sure if the bonus works in all cases

[Hammerhead]

What about leadership skills? I was under the impression that only the leader's (i.e. mine) skills were considered. Yet I find that the daily exp gain is more when I have a companion like Lezalit with a few points in the trainer skill?

Funnily enough, I bought my first book yesterday, and it was the life of Alixenus  . Took a bit of trial and error to figure out how to read it.
I thought it would be camp>select a book to read. But each time I did that it would just 'leaf through a few pages' and would stay at 0% read. Finally realized I had to camp>wait for some time to it to actually start counting as % read.

[Oskatat]

if you read the faq and look for trainer, you notice that it is an exception. Trainer is counted per.. well... trainer. Every companion with trainer 2 and a higher level than the training unit will add 10 xp to it. If you hire a companion with trainer who has a higher level than you, you gain xp as well and they also train eachother. It is, as far as i know, the only skill to benefit from every person who has it

you read whenever you camp or rest in a town/city/castle