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If you want to cross the 99+ percentile in CAT 2026, VARC is where the real edge lies. The trick isn’t solving hundreds of RCs-it’s building the reading muscle that helps you understand tone, argument, and inference faster than everyone else.
This guide brings you KD’s Ultimate Reading List, divided by level (Beginner → Intermediate → Advanced), plus a reading plan, strategy tips, and FAQs that mirror what top VARC scorers actually do.
The VARC section tests how well you can decode ideas, analyse tone, and follow complex arguments across disciplines from sociology to economics.
Here’s what CAT really measures:
KD’s reading strategy moves in stages, like a gym routine for your brain
| Level |
Focus |
Reading Goal |
| Beginner |
Build habit & comprehension |
20 pages/day of simple, engaging books |
| Intermediate | Analyze tone & logic | 30 pages/day of structured nonfiction |
| Advanced | Strengthen inference & bias detection | 20–25 pages/day of dense, abstract works |
Quick tips
These are your warm-up books that are accessible, fast-paced, and perfect for developing rhythm and comprehension
| Book |
Author |
Why It Helps |
| Ram: Scion of Ikshvaku | Amish Tripathi | Builds narrative understanding and keeps you reading daily |
| Sita: Warrior of Mithila | Amish Tripathi | Strong character development; helps identify tone and viewpoint |
| Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta | Amish Tripathi | Trains you to see moral complexity, useful for abstract RCs |
| Chanakya’s Chant | Ashwin Sanghi | Dual narratives train you to follow parallel arguments |
| Autobiography of Ruskin Bond | Ruskin Bond | Enhances descriptive comprehension and visual imagery |
| Red Maize | Danesh Rana | Builds attention to detail and layered storytelling |
| Deception Point | Dan Brown | Helps you follow fast-moving logic under time pressure |
| India’s Most Fearless (Vol 1 & 2) |
Shiv Aroor & Rahul Singh |
Combines emotion and factual narration, good practice for RC tone questions |
Reading tip: Don’t rush these. Focus on clarity and context. Pause to note new words and how they’re used
These start shaping your analytical reasoning, much closer to the CAT RC tone and structure.
| Book |
Author |
Why It Helps |
| Mossad | Michael Bar-Zohar & Nissim Mishal | Builds retention for long factual passages |
| Rise and Kill First | Ronen Bergman | Develops attention to factual argument and chronology |
| Unbroken | Laura Hillenbrand | Improves comprehension of narrative nonfiction |
| Seeing Like a Feminist | Nivedita Menon | Trains you to handle layered arguments and social critique |
| David and Goliath | Malcolm Gladwell | Excellent for understanding argument turns and counterpoints |
| Outliers | Malcolm Gladwell | Builds familiarity with data-driven reasoning and examples |
| Deep Work | Cal Newport | Teaches sustained focus, key to long RC passages |
| Land of the Seven Rivers | Sanjeev Sanyal | Helps with complex information organisation |
| India Unbound | Gurcharan Das | Economic reasoning practice; similar to RC sources |
Practice cue:
After every chapter, summarize the author’s argument in 3–4 sentences.
Ask: What was the author trying to prove? What examples did they use?
These are your mental marathons, idea-dense, conceptually rich, and exactly the tone CAT loves.
| Book |
Author |
Why It Helps |
| A Man Called Ove | Fredrik Backman | Improves emotional inference and subtle tone detection |
| A Gentleman in Moscow | Amor Towles | Long descriptive passages sharpen patience and focus |
| Does He Know a Mother’s Heart? | Arun Shourie | Sharpens abstract comprehension and argument evaluation |
| Sapiens | Yuval Noah Harari | Builds understanding of interdisciplinary argumentation |
| Homo Deus | Yuval Noah Harari | Strengthens logical inference in predictive writing |
| The Mental Floss History of the World | Erik Sass | Trains your brain to process historical arguments quickly |
| India After Gandhi | Ramachandra Guha | Dense factual reading, great for RC endurance |
| Factfulness | Hans Rosling | Improves data interpretation and argument mapping |
| The Victory Project | Saurabh Mukherjea & Anupam Gupta | Enhances cause-and-effect reasoning |
| Stalingrad | Antony Beevor | Helps build context mapping and historical tone recognition |
| Berlin | Antony Beevor | Similar to RCs that merge fact with emotion |
| A Short History of Nearly Everything | Bill Bryson | Explains complex ideas clearly, emulate this in RC |
| The Silk Roads | Peter Frankopan | Builds global context; ideal for cross-disciplinary RCs |
| Enlightenment Now | Steven Pinker | Teaches handling dense, data-rich prose |
| India Is Broken | Ashoka Mody | Sharpens the ability to track long arguments |
| Sophie’s World | Jostein Gaarder | Excellent for abstract reasoning and philosophical RCs |
| The Better Angels of Our Nature |
Steven Pinker |
Trains endurance for 1,000-word complex texts |
| Week |
Focus | Reading Type | RC Practice |
| 1–2 | Build habit & comfort | Beginner books + 1 article/day | Untimed RCs (focus on understanding) |
| 3-4 | Deepen comprehension | Intermediate nonfiction | 2 RCs/day; summarize tone & purpose |
| 5-6 | Analyse complex ideas | Advanced nonfiction | Timed RCs; 3 passages alternate days |
Avoid these, and your accuracy, reading speed, and inference ability will compound fast
| Months | Focus | Sample Reads |
| Nov ’25 – Feb ’26 | Build habit | Amish Tripathi, Ruskin Bond, Coelho |
| Mar – Jun ’26 | Analytical reading | Gladwell, Newport, Menon |
| Jul – Oct ’26 | Master complexity | Harari, Pinker, Mody, Shourie |
Think of this reading plan as long-term skill compounding; every chapter you finish sharpens how you read, reason, and infer.
As KD puts it, “There can never be too many books, it’s just that there’s never enough time.”Start today. 20 pages a day. No excuses.
Each page builds your VARC edge, one RC at a time.Happy Reading
Team RODHA!