<p>Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby
Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Dickens, Charles Great Expectations
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World</p>
<p>These are what I would suggest for improving CR, although I haven’t read everything on the lists. I wouldn’t suggest things like The Odyssey, Death of a Salesman, any Shakespeare, or Oedipus Rex because those are plays or epic poems. CR passages aren’t in that form (but they are still worth reading). Likewise, I wouldn’t suggest The Catcher in the Rye, A Farewell to Arms (or any other Hemingway), As I Lay Dying, etc. because the writing styles are very spare and sometimes conversational. Their meanings are derived from more complex underlying narrative strategies.</p>
<p>When you are preparing specifically for CR, you probably want to focus on books that use “SAT words” where you can derive meaning from short, simple passages. Something like A Farewell to Arms is very simply written and has to be considered as a whole to really have meaning, and you won’t get anything like that on the SAT. (I would still suggest those books for leisure, though.)</p>