SureAI

When you do a quest that requires gathering of information, does it have to be performed in the sequence it is listed in the quest log?

I'm asking because I got to Ark, and I got a quest (bounty) to kill a wild mage, and I also had the quest "The Sole Place."

I decided to do both at the same time since one part of The Sole Place required me to search a cave for a clue.

After I turned to bounty in, I went to the library to get the other clue for The Sole Place. And, although the book is there, and I've read it about 20 times, it refuses to advance the quest to the next step (talk to the girl's father).

When I looked at the quest log, I noticed the library part is listed before the cave part, hence my question about the sequence.

Thanks.

Please attach two savegames. One before the bug happened and one where the quest stucks.
Savegames are located here: documents\mygames\skyrim\saves
A savegame consists of two files: one .skse file and one .ess file (please zip them together)
Thanks.

Even though I didn't get credit for the library book, I decided to go see the quest giver. I figured I'd see what happened, if anything, and if it didn't work, I'd abandon the quest and do it again.

To my surprise, as soon as I clicked on him, the library and cave parts updated in the quest, and the quest advanced without any further problems.