Back to the pseudo-randomizing-ish thingy - adding an offset (so it doesn't always start with the same book) and using bagginsbill's parmatic (with a bit of manual setting for the min/max/sensitivity to restrict the dials to the allowed values) seems fairly "sort-of-randomish-looking" to me.

(For anybody who doesn't use parmatic they'd have to manually set the 'Value_1's of the two 'PM:'nodes in the material room. Not quite so delightfuly user-friendly, but perhaps good enough I think. Or maybe I could use a script after all - one that automatically runs from a "Randomize" icon in the 'Pose' folder)

And then of course, how about mixing books between the left and right columns of the texture map ?

And why stick to just one texture map ?

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The 3Dcheapskate* occasionally posts sensible stuff. Usually by accident.
And it usually uses Poser 11, with units set to inches. Except when it's using Poser 6 or PP2014, or when its units are set to PNU.

*also available in ShareCG, DAZ, and HiveWire3D flavours (the DeviantArt and CGBytes flavour have been discontinued).