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.
Read War and Peace when I was 16 and liked it but lost the book a few years later. Just got it again several months ago with 20 years later having gone by in order to add it to my library for me and my son. Don’t remember anything about what you said, so definitely inspired me to read it again. Just have to finish Brothers Karamazov first, which isn’t going as well as Crime and Punishment lol. Anyway, thanks!