I have a lot of monster books. From Basic to Fifth Edition and almost everything in between. Plus throw in the crap load of books from Pathfinder and D20 I probably have two whole shelves devoted to monsters. I'm always on the lookout for great books of beast. Now for most part the majority of them are pretty repetitive and boring. You do however find a bunch of gems that inspire you.
My favorite monster books are the Planescape Monstrous Compendiums. Planescape being one of my favorite setting. The three books making up the series have such a wonderful layout and art style. The writing is top notch and very flavorful. There are a tremendous amount of interesting creatures. If you like plane hopping or throwing in an occasionally outer planar creature you can't go wrong with any of these books.
If you are fan of the OSR then these three books are simple conversions to Basic D&D, AD&D 1E, and any Retro-Clone. You do have an overlap with previous edition monster books but for the most part there is new text and fluff which are worth the price of admission. Hopefully Drivethrurpg will have them up on their site soon. The first two books are pretty easy to find but the third appendix I've seen very high asking prices.
I know it's a pipe dream but maybe one day Wizards of the Coast would collect all three books plus the four 32 page compendium found in the boxsets to make a massive tome of outer planar goodness. Then again if they don't I'm sure once all the PDFs are out you could probably combine them together and create one via Lulu.
Out of curiosity what are your favorite monster books? Any game or edition. With the exception of the core book which is your staples.
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