I read Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl 20 years ago when I was in middle school, front to back, and it's probably been the best investment of reading time I've ever made.
Found that interesting.
I had bought his book around that time or sometime later, but never read it fully, partly because I used to go cross-eyed from reading the text with all the italics and other highlighting (of the regexes in action) in a small font, which was probably needed to explain regex concepts, but still ...
but after reading this thread, I feel motivated to dive into regex again, at least at the shallow end of the pool, although I have dabbled in it and used it now and then in my work, before now.
That being said - regex is a superpower.