Science is only a few centuries old, and no one expects a physicist to understand biology, or even a particle physicist to be well versed in, I don’t know, materials science.
Now what you are saying is that you cannot, without guidance, interpret and find hidden meanings in some of the texts that most of any other drew on a history of literature that spans millennia and continents?
I’d be surprised if you, or anyone without formal training, could.
We dilettants can glimpse something, and we are both lucky and cursed that the surface level of a novel is much easier to enjoy than that of quantum mechanics.
Be we are also lucky that we get to enjoy literature in the age of internet, where experts are just a click away and can explain us stuff.
The book that made me a bookworm (the Italian term would be “libridinoso”, portmanteau of book and libidinous) was “Elena, Elena, amore mio” by Luciano De Crescenzo.
I never re-read it, and I don’t even remember the plot (I think it’s a retelling of the Odyssey), but it introduced me to Greek Mythology (it had an appendix with all the gods names and relationships), and there was no going back.