Does 98% comprehension/extensive reading work for actual books vs graded readers?

I recently picked up a real novel and performed some analysis on it - of the 2500 characters in the book, I do not know 1300 characters.

Interestingly, if I learn the 300 most common of these unknown characters, I'll have 98% character comprehension of this novel. If I learn the next 200 most common, I'll have a 99% character comprehension.

Of course, I'll still be missing 800-1000 characters. I find it kind of unrealistic that I'll be able to use extensive reading and contextually understand the book while totally failing to recognize this many characters.

Has anyone had success with extensively reading a real book, not a graded reader, with only 98% comprehension?

At any rate I plan on reading this book twice; first after I have acheived 98% character comprehension and next after I have acheived 100%.

submitted by /u/chinawcswing
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