Since the original title asked about "problems" let me site 2 things to be aware of.

First, I avoid the typical travel guide books. Lonely Planet, for example. Has some good information in it but is mostly geared to backpackers and in the books I've looked at, at least half the information is just plain wrong. I live part time in Thailand and I picked up a Lonely Planet Thailand guide to read while waiting for a flight one time and I went page by page "wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong". Even many of the language translations are bogus.

Second, be careful of site like FT and TA and others. You can get a lot of good information, but you need to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you see someone posting about how evil a particular place is, how the locals are all thieves and liars and everyone rips you off, move to the next post. These are usually people who created their own problems but wanted someone to blame it on. Similarly, ignore those that create too bright of a picture. Do like they do in Olympics gymnastic scoring. Throw out the highest scores and the lowest scores then based your decision on what's left.