Grapes of Wrath- What I did not like about the book

Obviously the book is long so that is the first thing that makes me not like it, but I guess that is more of a personal preference. My biggest problem with the book was not the length so much as it was the wasted words. There were some stories and passages that in no way furthered the plot, depth of a character, or that were merely entertaining. They were just an annoyance to me as the reader because I feel like I wasted time reading and picturing an entire passage that meant nothing. This in my opinion is the authors mistake because he should have realized that if something isn't going to further the story, it doesn't belong. I do not like randomness when I read. I also disliked how the book had times of an overly amount of excitement then complete boring in one chapter to the next. There was no medium ground to where your interested but not on the edge of your seat. It was always one or the other for me which made it hard to read because I loved the exciting parts but it took forever to get to them because the boring parts made me have to put the book down. If I can put a book down and not care one bit, that is not a good sign what so ever. As much as I loved the plot and characters, I could have used a little more organization of the book. Sometimes I felt like I was reading the same kind of thing over and over again. I don't mean that he was using repetition either. He was just repeating a general story line over and over in different versions which made me want to skip a few pages because I knew what was happening already.