While in seminary I was exposed to the writings of a theologian named Hans Urs von Balthasar. He once stated, "The content (Gehalt) does not lie behind the form (Gestalt) but within it."
We obscure the content of the Bible when we ignore the form. Nothing in Scripture communicates to us apart from form. The entire Bible is relentlessly rhetorical. And we cannot ignore the form without changing or distorting the content.
The way the Bible is written is every bit as important as what is written. We fail as exegetes when we atomize exegesis, as if form could be separated from content. Exegesis is simply noticing and responding to what is said and how it is said. Hence a careful Bible reader will proceed with caution, allowing the medium to inform the message and vice versa.
Exegesis of this kind is the furthest thing from pedantry. Exegesis is loving God so much that we stop and listen carefully to what he says. Exegetes don't take a quick glance and then run off and talk endlessly on social media about the "message" of the text. Without a close reading of the text, exegesis gets sappy. "I always read through the entire Bible in a year" ends up becoming an excuse for laziness.
And so it is that the practice of Bible reading involves us in determining not to overlook the rhetorical level of language. The Bible is chock full of alliteration, rhyme, assonance, alliteration, homoioteleuton, paronomasia, and metaphor. There is so much here to delight us. "God is a rock" (Psalm 18:2) is a metaphor. Psalm 119 employs a literary device that goes through the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet to celebrate the eternal delight of God's word. Heb. 12:1-2 uses athletic imagery to warn us against quitting the race of the Christian life. John uses apocalyptic language in Revelation to emphasize that nothing that happens in God's world is unscripted.
Read, yes. But read only what is there. And be sure to read it the way it is there. Close reading of Scripture is not a method or a technique for reading the Bible. It is a cultivated, developed habit of abiding in the text.