The manual was about 5% of the reading I did for the game -- online guides and the BG2 forum here made up the other 95%. Don't lament the loss of the books, start up the game, play through the first annoying dungeon, and then you'll have learned most everything you need to go forward. If you don't like your choices at that point, start over because you're still very early on.
The game manual's crappy spiral binding came apart easily anyway.
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