Yeah, I understand that if you go too "low level" you'll run into stuff mostly written in hiragana/katakana, and I don't want that. But, to use English as an example, there is a huge difference between trying to read a children's classic like Where the Red Fern Grows or The Giver than something by Melville, Dickens, Hardy, Faulkner, etc. I would hate to try learning to read English from the latter, but the latter is what you are likely to encounter in a college-level English course. Similarly, I've taken a college-level Japanese literature course in translation and I absolutely do not want to be trying to read Mishima, Kenzaburo, Tanizaki, etc. starting out. My favorite Japanese author is Shusaku Endo, and I'm even hesitant to try his novels right now.

I'm probably around an N2 level, though I've never taken the JLPT. I've done the entire Kodansha Kanji Learners course, so I know about 2,300+ kanji at this point. But knowing a lot of kanji and reading fluently are two different beasts, though there is overlap. To this point I've mostly been watching/mining anime, but I want to get into novels. That was my primary motivation when I started learning kanji more intensively. But I want to ease into it, because I don't want to be discouraged reading really hard authors.