[mindcrime]

Oh, gotcha. That's an interesting question. For me, I do usually "just read it" when reading fiction. But in my case, to be completely honest, a lot of the fiction I read is more on the "low brow" end, and is just escapism when I need to let my brain rest a bit. I spend a lot of time reading non-fiction, taking online classes, watching math videos on Youtube, etc., and sometimes I just want to "unplug" and veg out to some generic thriller novel.

Is there anything in particular I would want to be doing ? What would make me enjoy fiction more is I primarily read to learn new things ?

The one obvious thing I can think of would be to make it a point to stop and look up, and internalize, any unknown words you might encounter. Also, if you read literature that includes untranslated phrases in other languages (that you don't already know) you could make it a point to try translating those passages, or at least look up the translations online and think about how they integrate into the work.

Or if you read literature that references historical events, or famous people, or real locations, etc., you could go off and research those (people|places|events). I have actually done a little bit of that when reading novels by Daniel Silva, since he incorporates a lot of interesting references to historical events and places in his books.