How to develop a reading habit to boost your CAT score?

Being a voracious reader is an art, an art that can only be accomplished with practice. A reader never forces himself/herself with books, instead, he/she start craving them sooner than later. It’s like playing a test match, you must be in it for the long haul. Do not exhaust yourself on day 1 by reading 300-400 pages all at one go and then laying low for the remaining weeks. This attitude will never translate into a habit, instead, it will only be something that you force feed to yourself. Join CAT online classes that help you enhance your preparation.

What’s most important is to identify your calling. Some prefer fiction, while others prefer mythology. The trick is to ask yourself, what is it that you feel like reading? Because, whatever it is, the magical land of books has an answer to it. There is no on one this planet who can claim with certainty that, they do not enjoy reading books, the truth is that they haven’t yet found their calling. Because, once they do, there’s no stopping!

So let’s break it down, to discover what your reading-Pandora-box has to offer
First and foremost, spend some time defining the type of books you’d like to read. All you have to do is, enlist topics that interest you. For example, if all you do is watch sports, you could want to read autobiographies of famous sportspersons. If you follow fashion trivia, you could read about fashion around the world. Ergo, for every topic you pick, there is a book out there waiting to be read.

While you pick these books, you must also keep your goal in sight. This is a long term habit, no doubt, but we also need to ensure that this habit reaps a benefit in the form of a well-read aspirant to crack CAT Interviews and to also propel CAT score. Since, you are in the habit of solving lengthy RCs based on economics, science etc, it might be useful to add these topics to your already prepared list.

Once your list is ready and laminated (because, how else would it be final?) your job is almost done. Now you only need to pick your magical books. While visiting a book store or searching online are the obvious tools one would use, I’d recommend something more social. Speak to your circle, post it on Facebook, and let the world suggest the books that you could read given your topics. What this would do is, one introduce you to your reading circle, so that you can exchange and read new books and two, the books you would read would have some sort of validation on them as well.

What you must always, remember is to ensure that this is a long term habit. And no habit comes easy, you need to develop it with time. So, challenge yourself to read more each day. You can use quick fixes like, keeping a book beside your bed, or setting time daily to read. Or you could go digital by setting up a Goodreads account and committing to reading a set number of books in a calendar year.

As and when you start enjoying your journey, add a few books from your CAT topics as well, so that reading RCs becomes easier day by day. It is important to add these books early on so that you have enough time to propel your scores.

Here are a few books to read for CAT that should definitely add value to you

Fiction

1984 – George Orwell
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Alice’s Wonderland – Lewis Carrol
The Great Gatsby – Scott Fitzgerald
Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

On India

India after Gandhi
The Last Mughal

Economics/Management

The World is Flat – Thomas L. Friedman
Freakonomics – Steven D Levitt
The undercover Economist – Tim Harford

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