Totally agree. However, with the rabid fans and mods that inhabit these forums its 110% pointless to post anything here. It will never see the light of day to the devs, and the entire time your trying to bring something to light you will be relentlessly attacked by the rabid fans who feel its their duty to protect the game, and mods who will inform you of why you are wrong.
The only available solution is to put rabid fans and mods on ignore, and then mod game to your liking. I'm not a programmer by any stretch, but I was able to learn to make some mods by looking at what others did, and using a xpath tester to eventually figure stuff out.
The learn by reading thing isn't bad as a concept, but its just to much. 75 books to master a skill is really just silly when you think about it. So I'm making a work around mod that will allow players to just craft books from paper, glue and leather. The better solution would be to just not require so many books, but my programming skills just aren't up to that.