I have some recommendations depending on where you are looking on the scale.

For something modern and non-fiction, I recommend the Daoism chapters of Souls of China. This is a book by a prominent journalist that shows him interacting with Chinese people who practice Daoism now and how it actually integrates into their lives. It’s also an easy read for someone with no experience with Daoist practice or philosophy.

For an interesting narrative that explains Daoist ideas, try Seven Taoist Masters. It’s an enjoyable work of fiction that explains Daoist ideas in an easily digestible way.

If you want something a little drier and factual, but still interesting, look at Early Daoist Scriptures. This is an academic text series that really dives into Daoist ideas through history, including the different sects, their beliefs, and philosophy. One chapter will be talking about the “eating mercury” the other user mentioned. The logic behind this is actually that one should be able to separate harmful from non-harmful components of substances through the practice of alchemy, to ‘unmake’ things that were made by the universe and natural processes. Another will talk about Daoist healing practices and herbal medicine. Daoist revolts, meditation, and when Daoists would act as ‘spirit negotiators’ for families who believed they were being cursed by their ancestors. There’s a lot of stuff in here that Westerners are completely unaware of and won’t be touched on in things like the Tao of Pooh, which I strongly do not recommend.

PDFs/epubs of these are freely available online if you search for them. I’d recommend reading these in the order I listed them and branching off from there rather than diving straight into something like the Dao De Jing, which isn’t an authoritative text across history or easily understood without a previous understanding of Daoist ideas.

I took a course on Taoism in college and the only thing the professor said about religious Taoism was “it’s about eating mercury to become immortal.”