I can roll with the feel of their skin thing so far, because LKH comes across as a very tactile person. She's blogged previously about needng to pet things/people to calm herself down or having a swatch of fur or fabric that she can feel when she's writing. The problem is that she never expands it beyond her own personal tactile experience into those things you mention -- it's about how she feels things, not how they exist beyond the moment she touches them. There's zero thought put into the how or why these things are the way they are, we're just told that they are. It's lazy, and frankly amateur.

And the more I think about it, the more offended I get as someone who aims to be better in their craft. Like, after twenty years of publishing, LKH should have fluked a better book by now. That she keeps getting worse takes a really special talent.