Close reading is for nerds

Should I quit worrying and just enjoy the story?

When you're reading a book you haven't read before, a fiction book specifically, are you reading for story, for language, or are you studying the mechanics of it all to understand how the author built the text? Maybe you're able to do all three, and if you can simultaneously follow the story and absorb the poetry of the writing while also looking behind the curtain, would you please tell me your secrets? Do you read super slowly?

Maybe I'm just dumb, but wherever I read something new I'm literally just trying to follow along with what's happening in the story. It's only on rereads, or if I remember at different points like, you know maybe I should stop here and think about what devices are being used, that I'm about to take a break and appreciate the word choices, sentence structure, and pacing. Reading is more for just enjoyment, it's often homework and real life examples of how I can make my own work better.

Or maybe I'm not a dummy, maybe I'm just really good at suspending my own disbelief because I'm also one of those people who can never successfully predict what's going to happen next in a movie, unless it's a very bad movie. I'm almost always surprised, and yes I do know about the story circle and have done a little bit of research on how screenplays are written and still.

Cormac McCarthy’s recent death prompted me to try reading one of his books. If you don't count watching No Country For Old Men multiple times, which you probably shouldn't count as reading, I'd never picked one up. Because I do not have the kind of uninterrupted time required to sit down and do a leisurely activity such as reading a book, I opted to download the audiobook version of Blood Meridian so I can listen to it while cooking or doing housework. Listening the other day while eating a bowl of cereal made me realize that I was only kind of listening to the story and really not taking in any of the other structural elements of the text. Which made me want to write this post.

Am I thinking about this too much? Are writers doing close reads every time they read fiction for the first time? Should I just chill and enjoy the story? Or should only do nonfiction on audiobooks and wait until I have the brain space to pick up a novel?