I wish I’d saved the comment as now I cannot find it again, but I saw someone on Reddit aver that no one younger than 15-16 could possibly read and understand Moby Dick.

I read it when I was 9 years old and understood it just fine. It’s not really a difficult book, though some of the language is archaic. I believe I learned the word “ere” from that book, and was also amused by the the term “sallied out” which is used often in the work.

I was probably mentally capable of reading and understanding it when I was 6-7, but hadn’t yet discovered it. In that era, I mainly read National Geographics and other non-fiction and didn’t read much fiction.

If this sounds impossible, remember that at the time I was scoring in the 99th percentile of high school seniors for reading comprehension.

Yeah, I started early and never stopped.