Hmm, you might be right. It has been a while since I used the book so I do not know.
Darn, sad.
So, the thing about the book, it only shows "new" stuff if you are holding an upgrade material like gold. But the way it does this is by doing ????? For the name then gold + ????? For the recipe under the name. I already know there are things I can upgrade, but those really do not help me make sure I got the ones I want if I don't know if I'm missing something. Hell, I wouldn't have thought to upgrade the loot finder if I hadn't seen a comment about it >_> and even then, I still wonder if there was a better option to use the silver on. Just like I am currently wondering what I should upgrade with the thing after gold.
Oh, for those, you can generally upgrade all of the equipment that boost your stats like the arcane ring that boosts damage as long as they look like they are made of metal. You should be able to collect the necessary metals to upgrade all of your equipment. The current upgrade path is x -> silver -> gold -> mithril. I recommend upgrading the loot finder and then the things that are important for damage. Maximizing resource collection and damage output speeds up the grind I find.