I thought Farewell to Arms was boring. For Whom the Bell Tolls was great. I think the difference is the romance was more at the forefront with the former, and with Hemingway being so matter-of-fact, it didn’t work. But for a war story about a bridge, that style worked great.
I read it but absorbed none of it.
The Little House series has a lot of this. I found the process of melting lead to make bullets for hunting in Little House in the Big Woods especially satisfying.
River of Doubt is non-fiction, but the way the author goes into detail about how the rainforest was formed over millions of years of evolution was really captivating.
The Life of Pi is probably about half this kind of content. Boy is lost at sea for months with a lifeboat and a handful of supplies (and animals).
Robinson Crusoe is similarly an isolation/survival story where the protagonist has to build a bunch of stuff.
“That’s the duty of the old,’ said the Librarian, ‘to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.’
They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
Gulliver’s Travels is much funnier if you’ve read Robinson Crusoe first. It’s a parody of it.