This could be from any age really. I remember reading lots of books like Harry Potter as a 4th grader to seem smart to the teachers looking at me but I didn’t understand any of it. When the big YA dystopian boom was happening, I read tons of terrible YA dystopias to seem cool but many of them frustrated me.
The Three Body Problem, although I don’t have a job related to it but engineering and maths background made me appreciate the science part of the novel really well.