Matt I must somewhat disagree with what you say about the looting. Where is the the fun if you wouldn't be able to loot the clothing off from any of the corpses?! ;)

Seriously though if we'd follow your 'simplifying scheme' to the max we'd end up eventually with a game of tic tac toe! The books and all that stuff adds depths! TES is a sandbox game and all this loose, random stuff is part of an immerse world, more or less. Since computer games first have been developed it was a major goal to do just that, create free-roaming worlds with loads of stuff that doesn't necessarily add up to the gameplay. But it still adds depth. You don't have to read the in-game books but for others such stuff adds a huge lot of depths to a game. That's something I find positive about TES.