That's understandable. I said that I hope you can use the concepts that you connect with, and I tried to imply that to do so you may have to read around the authors.
What I'm trying to say is that these authors are professional photographers and also teachers. We aren't in their classroom, we can't request a different approach when it's not clicking. But they aren't wrong.
Get past their style and focus on the concepts and, at each one that interests you, use different authors to change the approach.
I also agree that cropping isn't a bad thing per se, but I do think that it doesn't really help with composition. It's another retouch tool to tidy up, like dodge and burn etc.
Additionally, attempting to make your image as final as you can in the viewfinder, can only go to improve your compositions. Practice....etc.