Why is one of these things not like the other

Is this just my taste, or is there an issue of quality?

I started reading a couple of novels this week. One I liked, the other I didn’t. Both of them seem to feature rumination on taste and class/identity, and I’m wondering why I like it in one, and don’t like it in the other.

The book I like is Cory Doctorow’s Red Team Blues. This passage reflects on taste and class/identity, and it made me smile:

“If I laid down the Amex Black card that my KPMG fixer had messengered to me the day after I signed up, there would be a sub-twenty-four-hour interval, and then a white-glove delivery crew would be at my doorstep with a new car, hand-rubbed and fully loaded. A custom paint job would add a mere two days to the process. In seventy-two hours, I could have a bright orange, all-electric Porsche or Audi or even a Lambo in hand, with acid-green trim and custom plates. Such a car would be a flashing status symbol, and the status it would convey is: “Here is a pathetic specimen of middle-aged manhood, with more money than brains.” Never mind the fact that it would be a delight to drive and fun to look at. The self-conscious mind cares not for such frivolous considerations.”

The book I don’t like is Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind. This passage also involves taste in products and class/identity, but it left me feeling exhausted:

“Ruth was at a loss. Their normal routine was to first unlock all the cabinets filled with their special and necessary things: swimsuits and flip-flops, Shiseido sunscreen, a wool Hermès picnic blanket, and in the pantry, a tin of Maldon salt, a bottle of olive oil from Eataly, the horrifyingly sharp Wusthof knives, four jars of Luxardo cherries, Clase Azul, Oban, Hendrick’s, the wines guests had brought as hostess gifts, dry vermouth, bitters. They’d reunite with those possessions: rub them on their skin, scatter them around the rooms, and feel truly at home. They’d pull off their clothes—what was the point having a home in the country if you couldn’t walk around mostly naked?—and make Manhattans and slip into the pool or the hot tub or just into the bed. They still went to bed with each other, aided by those most effective blue tablets. “I’m scared.””

I don’t think it’s just my affinity for the items mentioned. I have no interest at all in cars. I don’t have much interest in the homeware in the second quote, either. I think there’s just a humourlessness about the second quote that leaves me cold. It’s like, yes, I get that we do, in fact, spend lots of our lives obsessing about things. But if the characters and the author can’t find the humour in that - can’t detach from it, and recognise it for the absurdity that it is - then I’m not going to get drawn into the novel. I think that’s the difference that is making me like one book but not the other. But I’m not sure.