i am mos def a book collector... but i find nothing more frustrating than instructional MA books... esspecially chinese ones with those freakin drawings and massive gaps between A and B and so on... so i never really took any instructional books very seriously and always read them, get what i can and move on... i got more psycological and spiritual advice than practical fighting techniques...
but off the top of my head...: i found the "72 arts of shaolin" by jin jing zhong to be pretty inspiring when i was young...
i also really enjoy robert w smiths writing... esspecially his "martial musings" book...