I’ve already told you (here and here) how important reading is. Now let’s move on to the next steps.

In GMAT and CAT, passages are asked from:

social sciences: include (but are not limited to): anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology, and sociology.

humanities: literature, philosophy, history, human geography, law, politics, religion, and art.

sciences: physics, biology, astronomy, etc.

business-related fields: marketing, economics, and human resource management

So here are a few suggestions to introduce yourselves to these topics. You don’t have to read everything. If you don’t understand something, try giving it a re-reading and ponder it a bit, but if you still don’t, then ask someone. Also, you don’t have to understand everything to carry on. It’s a myth that you have to understand everything the 1st time. When you come across something you don’t understand, first finish it; then come back to it and you’ll be surprised to see how much it makes sense then.

“I don’t like it”, or “It is boring” etc. are not good reasons to not-read. Boredom is a necessary stage to anything worthwhile in life. Thank God A.R. Rehman or Eric Clapton overrode their boredom of practising musical scales. Else we wouldn’t have witnessed some of the greatest musicians and composers of our era. Similarly we should be thankful that Sachin Tendulkar or Roger Federer ignored the boredom of practising the same shot again and again – maybe 1000 times. Or running 100 rounds of a stadium. If you too ignore the boredom stage, you’ll be pleasantly shocked to experience the joy that awaits you on the other side. The joy of knowing that you know. 

Social Sciences:

Psychology:

https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/

Read what interests you, and skim what doesn’t. The idea is to familiarise yourself with the basics. Definitely try to read Chapters 1, 2, 12, 15 and 16.

Chapter 8 – Learning, and Chapter 9 – Remembering and Judging are of particular relevance to you as these may help you learn and remember better.

If you decide not to read the other chapters, at least read the summaries. Thankfully they are provided for every chapter.

Some nice books are:

Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely (no prior background required; written for laypeople. Very interesting. Basically the book is that we – humans – are not as rational as we think.)

Thinking Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman (more advanced version of the book above, this book can be said to be the bible of behavioural psychology)

Flow: The Classic Work On How To Achieve Happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (one of my favourite books, it says that one of the surest ways to happiness is to find and then do work which challenges us and takes us to a state he calls “flow” where the mind is concentrated on an activity which the person finds joyous. However this is not a page-turner. But your effort will be more than rewarded.)

History/Anthropology/Philosophy:

You can find everything in these topics on Wikipedia. So think of any topic you want to know about and go there.

Some suggestions are:

Democracy

Philosophy

The number of cross-references in these two topics alone could take you months, if not years, to finish. So take your time and don’t go overboard.

Some nice books are:

In Light of India – Octavio Paz (Paz was Mexico’s ambassador to India and so this book gives a beautiful outsider’s perspective on India)

Sapiens: Yuval Noah Harari (this is how history is made interesting)

A History of Philosophy  – Bertrand Russell (written in 1945 and still going strong; what more should I say). It’s a thick book but you can read it (or parts of it) for free here. You can even download pdf, epub or kindle versions.

Problems of Philosophy – Bertrand Russell – a brief and accessible guide to the kind of problems discussed in philosophy. Here’s an online version.

Science:

Online:

https://www.thoughtco.com/learn-about-science-608332: Here you can find introduction to Biology, Physics, Chemistry etc.

Please read something on every branch of science. You don’t have to go really deep, but you should become familiar with broad topics in each branch.

Some good books are:

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics – Carlo Rovelli: This is a very thin book: only 96 pages. It condenses the revelations of post-Newtonian physics – from Einstein’s theory of relativity to quantum mechanics – into seven brief, accessible lessons.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History – Elizabeth Kolbert: Widely considered to be a modern classic.

Gaia A new look at life on Earth – J E Lovelock: In this classic work Lovelock puts forward his idea that the Earth functions as a single organism.

As for politics, business, and economics I think carefully and consistently reading a newspaper and a weekly – or fortnightly – magazine should suffice. Also read my earlier posts (links above) wherein I’ve mentioned some more online sources.