orens are hard to come by in this game and i don't want to spend a lot of time on dice poker to afford the books... is there another way?

'Monster Lore' on the skill tree will give you some entries.

Some NPCs can also be helpful - for example, in chapter 1 some old women will provide information if you give them food and say you want to hear their story.

I didn't have much trouble buying all bestiary and herbal/alchemic books. I even bought history books out of interest. Enough orens can be obtained from loot and from selling potions which you can make.

Quick question - who will buy my potions?

Naturally alchemists, herbalists and healers. Not all of them are interested in all potions. Try Kalkstein for instance. I think Abigail buys some too if I remember correctly. Another good way to make money is by selling monster parts.

My Geralt is horrible with money just like evey book he sees he gets. Plus some bad poker games here and there.

I try to buy all the books from each chapter, if you know more about monsters/plants, you can harvest more parts, sell more, before I start to play poker I save, if I lose I reload the save, I find that I win almost 2 from 10 times, but that way I will not lose money, also try to fistfight with max amount of money for each one, after each day you can fight again or play poker...

Wait. You can fight again? Dammit. Thanks for that :)

That should make getting money a bit easier in the future - I'm still halfway through my first run.

Yes, also after a day you can re -enter in caves and the monster are here again(on island with cockatrice,from swamp, it is same), so more parts and xp, I usually play poker and fisthfight until the opponent have no money, after that I start to run all over place to loot/take plants, after that meditate until night, after that I walk on that level on any place to kill monster and take plants,meditate to day, sell parts, play again poker and fisthfight, and so on, my aim it is to have 9-10 levels of character gain per game level(minus prologue where it is no monster respawn); also read the wiki, some quests must be done before others, try to get all boss monsters, and to make all side quests...at some point when you kill mosters you will have only gain 1xp, if you have enough money, this is the sign you must go on to next game level...