DEFINITIVE READING LIST FOR CAT PREPARATION (RC) – BOOKS

Before reading this, you might want to read the post “How to read for Reading
Comprehension for CAT“.

Why have we titled this piece the “Definitive Reading list for CAT Preparation (
Reading Comprehension)”? No particular reason. We thought of saying “Perhaps a
decent starting habit to build a reading habit”. That’s not quite appealing, is it?

When I started writing this, I thought it would be a short and sweet post. Turns out
there are lots of books that I like, and lots of websites and blogs as well. So, I have
restricted this post to merely books. I have detailed a list of websites and blogs in a
separate post, you can read it here: “Definitive reading list for CAT Preparation –
Blogs & Websites“.

Starters and more

We are going to start off by outlining a list of books for beginners – for folks who
haven’t managed to read beyond 5 novels in their lifetime and can recall with
excruciating detail the extent of pain they faced in finishing those 5 bl00dy
novels. The defining metric for book-selection for this group is unputdownability.
Style, language, richness of prose, plot depth etc. be damned. There needs to be
enough meat in each page for one to flip over to the next. Everything else can
come later.

1. Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown: A plot that you might have heard of, a book that
moves at a devilish pace, with enough plot turns to keep you reading late into the
night. What’s not to like.
2. If Tomorrow Comes, by Sidney Sheldon: A con artist story with brilliantly
constructed cons; with a lady protagonist to boot.
3. Kane and Abel: Slightly slower-paced than the other books in this list. But when
the plot lines are this rich, one can go adjust to the slower pace.
4. Windmills of the Gods: Another one from Sidney Sheldon, a classic thriller that
rattles by while you catch your breath. The plot lines are predictable but still worth
following.
5. Ice Station Zebra from Alistair Maclean: Alistair Maclean books are similar to
James Bond novels. Enough said. There are a number of other Alistair Maclean
books that are frightfully pacy.
6. Shall we Tell the President by Jeffrey Archer. Fast-paced, well-written.
7. Godfather by Mario Puzo. Someone somewhere is right now planning to make the
1056th movie made from this novel.
 Moving on, I have given a set of books, based on genre here. I would strongly
recommend readers to ignore this at any point of time and pick up books
that catch their fancy and try them. Putting tick next to a reading list is the
worst approach to follow towards reading.

Fiction

1. Sidney Sheldon: Rage of Angels. There is a Tamil movie that has been made on
this story. Movie buffs try to find the name of the movie.
2. Jeffrey Archer: The Prodigal Daughter. Pleasant read; strictly not great. JA has
also written a few collections of short-stories that are very interesting.
3. John Grisham: Firm, Pelican Brief, Partner, Runaway Jury. All the plot lines are
based on law firms. If legal drama is your thing, you have found your manna. Quite
a few have been made into movies. Firm and Pelican Brief were among the early
books. My favourites are Partner and Runaway Jury. Runaway Jury is an
outstanding tale (even the movie is pretty decent)
4. Agatha Christie – Anything that has Hercule Poirot can be read at least once.
5. Mario Puzo: The man who gave us Godfather absolutely owns this genre. No one
writes about the Mafia better than Mario Puzo. If you think Nayagan or Sarkar or
Company are decent movies, you will absolutely love Mario Puzo.

Indian Authors

1. Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children, Shame: Every year, literary boffins get
together and select a book to foist the booker prize on. Recently, they got together
to select the best among the books that have got a booker. Midnight’s Children
got that award – Booker of Booker. Magic realism is not really my thing, but even I
quite enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the parallels with Indian politics. Salman Rushdie
has a way of picking the right metaphor that will leave you savouring his books long
after you have completed them. Some ideas that he has planted have you thinking
about them for a while. Any book by Salman Rushdie is a slightly higher-effort read
though.
2. Chetan Bhagat: Mr. Bhagat is decent without ever threatening to be great. The
opposite of Salman Rushdie or PG Wodehouse. For these stalwarts, the English
language is to be toyed with, to be played around to derive joy from. For Mr.
Bhagat, the language is merely a tool convey a story. You almost feel like Mr.
Bhagat has written some portions of his novels as expansions from power point
slides. For all that, he picks plot lines we can connect with and weaves ideas around
them well. He is what I would call an ‘ideas’ author, rather than a ‘language’
author. If you can stop being a language snob and let go of Bhagat-envy, you can
actually enjoy his books. (A little confession due here – I suffer from both)
3. Aravind Adiga: I have read only ‘The White Tiger’ but fell in love with the author
based on just that. It is to my discredit that I have not read any of his other books.
Fabulous writer. Uses the language brilliantly and there are few wasted words in the
prose. The various strands of ‘The White Tiger’ were so brilliantly spun that I
was breathless with praise by the end of it.
4. Ashish Taseer’s “The way things were” is also a very good read.

Re-packaged mythology

1. Palace of Illusions: The best in the genre, by a distance. Streets ahead of the rest
of the competition (the gap is almost as wide as 2IIM and the rest of the field in
online CAT preparation. Bing!). I must confess that I have a weakness for the
Mahabharatha. I consider it the greatest story ever written. Even so, this book is
really well constructed and damn well-written. I hate books where the author does
not care enough about the language. When you read a novel, you expect tighter
prose than when you read a newspaper or a blog and on this count, this novel
delivers. (The same cannot be said of other authors of this genre, barring perhaps
Kavita Kane)
2. Karna’s wife: Within the Mahabharatha, my favourite character is Karna. So, it was
no surprise that I liked this book. Kavita Kane cares about the way her chapters are
constructed. The plot is critical, but in a book where there cannot be too many
surprises it is probably crucial that the author use the language well. Kavita Kane
succeeds in doing that.
3. I read books by Ashok Banker, Anand Neelakandan and Amish Tripathi as well. I did
not find them as good as the two books mentioned above.

Humour and Satire

1. Not a Penny more not a penny less by Jeffrey archer. Great fable, well told.
2. PG Wodehouse:

“And she’s got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who
marries you will need.”

“At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to
handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve
somewhere in the later seventies.”

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

“Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had
met him in 1812 and said, “So, you’re back from Moscow, eh?”

I am a massive fan. To read more about the man, click here.

My wife has gently hinted on occasion that if I continued to go overboard on

praising Wodehouse, I might be considered a bore. But we must keep two things in
mind here 1) Men have risked life and limb to get us to where we are. Should I
really worry about “being called a bore.”? 2) There is no such thing as going
overboard while praising Wodehouse.
 For the love of God, do not read PG Wodehouse because it might help you in
Reading Comprehension for CAT. The man marveled in the exercise of creating an
alternate world, and if you have decided to be a part of that alternate world the
least you can do is to leave such mundane thoughts as cracking CAT somewhere far
far away.

3. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: Immense. The man who gave
us the trilogy in four parts (of five books) is a genius. Someone Else’s Problem,
Total Perspective Vortex, Kakrafoon’s curse of telepathy can all be created only by a
mind of particularly devilish genius. Reading a part of this series might make you
better at enjoying humour across genres of writing. For a long time, I found myself
being unmoved by passages that others found outrageously funny. PG Wodehouse
and Douglas Adams changed that. Now I am the guy who laughs out loud in a
Shatabdi and follows it up with a sheepish grin.

(Edit: This might help you not just with RC. There is a grammar section in there as
well)

4. Catch-22 by Joesph Heller: My most favourite book of all time. A friend of mine
asked me to have a go at this while in college and I just did not get it. I was not
much of a reader, and the satire was completely lost on me. When I read it much
later, I absolutely fell in love with the book. Yossarian lives. I know people who I
sometimes fondly think of as Colonel Cathcart. You will see many people who are
impervious to absolutes during your MBA. I have read this book a number of times
and I am sure I am going to read it a number of times in the future as well. I have
even written about this – here and here.

India after Gandhi – Ramchandra Guha

This is the defining book for all things about Indian politics and Indian leaders in the
period from 1940 to 1990. Ramchandra Guha is quite simply a marvellous historian.
Luckily for us, he is also is a wonderful writer. A must-read for anyone who wants
to have some idea of India’s political journey.

My respect for Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar shot up manifold after I read this book.
We were incredibly lucky to have these giants in the period immediately after
independence. What would the Country not give to have men like this right now?

Single-themed books

1. Freakanomics, Tipping Point, Blink, Fooled by Randomness, The Undercover

Economist etc.: These and quite a few others are books based on a single theme. I
always found these types of books to be brilliant till page number 50, very
interesting till page 100 and spectacularly undramatic and repetitive from page
number 150. Read 1 or 2 of these if you must. But they are not must-reads. And
before you even start wondering, these books are not important for completing an
MBA.

The deal with Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand readers fall into three categories – 1) The ones who are deeply impacted
by the philosophy and thought process and cannot stop thinking about this for days
on end. Apparently Alan Greenspan was a huge fan. So, this group is not limited to
impressionable 20 somethings 2) Ones who do not see the point and think of it as
modern-day capitalist babble that has been repackaged as new philosophical
thought and 3) The ones who acknowledge that Atlas Shrugged is a decent ( if
slightly repetitive) book and it is up to us to not make anything more out of it.

Read Atlas Shrugged if you can muster the time and patience. This the best book. If
you are absolutely smitten by the book, read more.

I will follow up with a reading list that includes blogs, websites, and writers.

Now, on to the caveats. There are bound to be countless other books and authors
who are even more fabulous than the ones I have mentioned here (except PG
Wodehouse, there is no one more fabulous than the man). For all the
pretentiousness in the title, this is merely a broad starting point.

PS: I just realized that I had not mentioned John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath and
East of Eden). The more I read this post the more I feel that I have missed out on
some gems. Kindly send in your thoughts on other interesting books. I will append
those to the list.
DEFINITIVE READING LIST FOR CAT PREPARATION (RC)
– BLOGS & WEBSITES
Before reading this, you might to read the post “How to read for Reading
Comprehension for CAT” and also, the post “Definitive reading list for CAT
Preparation – Books”

Websites/Publications

The Economist

The Economist is a fabulous publication. They write on all kinds of international

affairs. They deal with politics, economics, culture, art, sport, books — the works.
Their writing style is fabulous. They write crisp articles with near perfect grammar.

Their style guide is awesome( take a look ). Their article on short words is brilliant
– click here to read it. Their Lexington and Bagehot columns are frightfully well-
written and insightful.

Point to keep in mind: They are a British magazine, so have a mild English bias and
a heavy Anglo-Saxon bias. So, the magazine regularly paints Russia as evil and
England and US as strivers for the good of the world. They are fiercely right-wing
economically and staunchly liberal when it comes to the socio-cultural axis. If you
are struggling to understand what left/right mean, you should probably read this
article .

The Economist price tag is pretty high though. One can read 3 articles per week
free of cost. If budget is a constraint, the free articles are probably the best place
to start.

Guardian

This is a left wing magazine from Britain. Their sports columns are pretty good, the
rest of the paper is less good. They are a sister concern of The Observer, which I
would rate as an even better publication. The magazine is good for the quality of
humour in their sports columns. The website is a classic example of British self-
deprecating humour. Their football column “The Fiver”, cricket column “ The Spin”
and their OBO collections are brilliant. Their Ashes coverage is fabulous. Their 2005
Over by over reporting was so brilliant that I think they made a book out of it as
well.

The Guardian is free. At least for now.

The Atlantic

I recently started going through this and I have loved most of their articles. They
write in long-form and write well-researched pieces. Their article titled “ The Obama
Doctrine” should be made mandatory reading for anyone who is interested in
international affairs. Get it here.

Our good friend Ravikumar Swaminathan tells us

that Nautil.us, aldaily and Aeon are also very good publications.

NYtimes

NYtimes is an excellent publication for keeping abreast of happenings in the US.

The blogs there are written by stalwarts and the output is of high standard. Paul
Krugman is a regular contributor. Paul Krugman, when he writes on Economics
exercises his gift of being able to convey in layman-speak complex Economics
ideas. However, when he writes on Politics he comes out as another shrill liberal,
unfortunately.

Newyorker

Extemely high-quality writing, on many different topics. The only glitch with this
publication is the fact that they are expensive. They had written a piece on Times of
India which is fabulous. Their comics are good as well.

Indian newspapers and magazines

Among Indian magazines, The Open is decent without being consistently good. The
magazine was really good when Manu Joseph was the editor but has become
inconsistent in the time since. This piece is one of my all-time favourites.

India Today, Outlook and the Week are really sad impersonations of magazines.
Read them if you are stuck in a dentist’s office with a boring receptionist. But only
then. If you are into long-form detailed-driven heavily researched articles written
with a minimum of flair, then Frontline works. We can respect the Frontline for
absolutely delivering on what they promise. The others are a disgrace.

Among newspapers, the Hindu editorial is good. The Hindu center page articles are
decent but inconsistent. Frequently, they write in a style that is abstruse. Many
writers in the Hindu revel in the fact that they have command over the language
and do not care enough about simplifying the text. If the Hindu writers can be
forced to read the Economist Style Guide, the end product could perhaps be less
vague. The Hindu editorial strikes the right balance between seriousness and
simplicity. It can be the starting point for keeping abreast of whatever is the most
important news item of the week/day.

The Hindu and the Frontline are left-wing publications. The Open is right now a
right-wing magazine, the others are non-magazines. Specific contributors to the
Times of India are excellent, but the newspaper itself is less so.

Sports writers

Sid Lowe writes fabulously good articles covering Spanish Football. Phil Ball used to
do a damn neat job of covering Spanish football till a few years ago. If you are into
La Liga, Sid Lowe is the best writer to read.

Cricket is blessed with an array of phenomenal writers. Gideon Haigh and Sambit
Bal are excellent, as is Osman Samiuddin. The article on ‘Haal of cricket’ by Osman
is a classic. Almost all articles on Cricinfo and Wisden are well-written. The recent
addition, Sharda Ugra also writes crisp articles. Andy Zaltzmann is a legend.

On cricket, one less well known freelancer is Rob Smyth. His coverage of the Ashes
is frequently jaw-droppingly brilliant. He also writes on football. One of the few
writers whom you can read no matter what they read on.

Blogs

Swaminomics – Apparently one of Bill Clinton’s greatest gifts was his ability to
simplify things without sacrificing the essence. He could do layman-speak without
sacrificing policy detail. Swaminomics has a similar gift. This piece explains FDI, FII
better than any text book will. Almost all his economics articles are good
demystifiers. So, someone without an Economics background but with interest in
the topic can have a good go at this.

Ramchandra Guha and MJ Akbar run websites/blogs. These are two writers who
have command over the topic they write about and know how to wield the language
well. If there is anything written by the two of them, it is worth reading.