I agree to an extent, but I've come to believe that the 'padding', often just examples that are variations of each other, is much more useful than it appears at first.
When I think back to books that I've read that felt like they had too much filler, I have to admit that many of the memories are the concepts via the anecdotes.
So perhaps the author shot a lot of anecdotes at you and a few stick, but another author could have done the same job with half as many pages. Again, I'm not against storytelling or anecdotes.
When I think back to books that I've read that felt like they had too much filler, I have to admit that many of the memories are the concepts via the anecdotes.