If the game freezes there are a few things you can try before restarting:
Ctrl+Alt+Del & arrow keys - switches you to another desktop, use system monitor to kill processes
Alt+Tab - switch back to PlayOnLinux, click configure, wine tab, click kill processes
Ctrl+Alt+F1 - or F2 or F3 and will switch to a shell where you can login and kill processes with "killall skyrim.exe"
Click the "Linux for beginners" in my signature and it walks you through some of these tasks and command basics to help you with games.
Besides all of that, I have just installed Skyrim last week and it plays beautifully.
The only problems I have are tree/shadows animation and underwater I can't see anything.
Reading books works perfectly. So I'm wondering if you need to install a windows package like vcrun2008?
Edited by booman