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.
At 12, I read a book about super smart 12 years olds who fell in love, used their brains to make a shit ton of money and run away together. The female protagonist read Racine (17th-century French playwright and master of alexandrines), so I started reading Racine to try and be as smart as her - and loved it. She also read Heidegger, so I tried to - but that one failed massively. I still count that book as one of my favourites because it pushed me to expand my culture in litterature, cinema and maths.