Should a Book be Judged by the Author's Personal Morality discussion

Maybe the answer to this question depends on the context and content of the book?

When I first joined this group the book that came first to my mind was Slavomir Rawicz' The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom. I revised my review of this classic survival trek memoir after the movie called attention to a possible hoax or at the very least a case of mistaken identity at the center of the story.

Which makes me ask myself, is a dishonest memoir ever still worth reading (or worth a positive review as a page turner) if it distorts or fabricates the truth to capitalize on increasing its audience through sensationalism?

Which leads us to a more recent memoir Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time and Jon Krakauer's subsequent Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way.

. . . alongside a slew of other memoirs that have been recently debunked, see:Three Cups of Tea -- and 4 Other Big Book Scandals.

Which all begs the question of what's the better read William Bligh's first hand accounts or Mutiny on the Bounty?

Are either of them strictly true accounts? Or should we search for the truth only in the testimony related to the mutiny cases or in Bligh's account to his superiors of the circumstances surrounding the loss of his ship? Is William Bligh's personal morality an important part of the story of the bounty?

What about Dave Pelzer's A Child Called "It"? Should that book be judged by the author's personal morality? Should K-12 students get 5 Accelerated Reader points if they read it and take a quiz on its content and click the right bubbles or should they get an A in Language Arts if they read it and say the book is sensationalist and there can be no right answers on the quiz because none of what they read can be proved true or untrue ?

I'm interested in the answer to that question and keep following this contentious review thread but there's no definitive answer yet here on goodreads! In fact the latest post sums up the conundrum with a question of interest to this group: "True or Not, does that make it a Horrible book?"

My answer, if it's a memoir, maybe so?

But don't expect a refund.

In a readers' fraud case against Greg Mortenson the court's answer to the question of whether someone who buys a memoir can expect a refund if the memoir turns out to be not fact but a subjective, personal recollection of events is "No." Readers don't deserve a monetary refund if a book contains fraudulent content .

Mortenson did have to repay his charity though.