Yes, RNG does need some work. As some of you've pointed out sometimes you can go for a long time without finding a necessary book. The wrench and the minibike are prime examples. Many times (probably 5 or 6 or so) I've played and couldn't find those books for the life of me! Other times I've found them fairly fast. So yes the loot drop tables and RNG does need work, but we're still in Alpha.
Going to CM shouldn't be a "GoTo option" period! Especially in 'normal game play.' CM = Cheat Mode = Creative Mode and should only be set when you start a new game, not turned off and on to 'bypass' an issue.
But with Alpha 17 - there are new things coming and there maybe changes that effect what we're talking about... But then there's "Basically Beta" as has been noted.
And yes - after sometime after obtaining 'everything' or virtually everything the game does get repetitive, but almost every game does.