It sounds like you're looking for word lists, rather than books.
The only book I'd really see as necessary would be a grammar book. And even there, Tae Kim's Grammar guide is on the internet for free. Might be different for different people, but I like his guide a lot as it's short and concise...
I'd recommend Eiyuu Senki GOLD. The story is basically non-existant (I could even give you a short rundown if you're interested) so you're not missing much there. There are a lot of short missions for interacting with the characters, but except a select few of them, they have nothing to do with...
Might just be me being an idiot, but I take the risk of asking anyway. I've been using AGTH since ages as I only needed the extract text function, but this game needed a custom hook I couldn't find.
Then, reading your post, I downloaded ITH and tried to get it to work. It worked on several of...