<p>hopefully that was enough to get you to click on this thread. anyway, its another CR thread and the consensus seems to be READ. I have until october, and thats wat i plan to do till then, READ; along with practice in barrons/kaplan/bluebook. but, wat kind of books are best to develop the reasoning for CR. my weakness is inference. some books i want to read are the elegeant universe, the audacity of hope, harry potter series....just to name a few, but will those help? other suggestions please!</p>
<p>i was about to write a thread about what to do about cr before the oct sat until i saw this one. </p>
<p>i'm wondering the same thing. within this approximate 4-month period, what are the best books to read? i can kind of understand why i keep getting 600's on the cr cause i don't read unless it's for school, sadly.
also, i've already deon bluebook, princeton review, kaplan, and mcgraw hill prep books. with gruber's and intending to my barron's, what other prep books do yall think are very good?</p>
<p>The best books to read are SAT BOOKS! Doing those is much more helpful. Seriously, the sat critical reading doesn't not test your reading ability but your reasoning skills. While reading may help, I'm convinced that it won't help NEARLY as much as practice.</p>
<p>And jadore- I don't read unless it's for school also, and I have an 800. Stop making excuses, you DON't have to be a lifetime reader to score 800!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>^ so wrong...............................................</p>
<p>I'd love for you to expand, but the fact that I got an 800 without reading pretty much proves that I'm not "so wrong". Are you going to deny my score, ride it off as a fluke?</p>
<p>It's as if (random, but makes a point) there is this restaurant, and people are disagreeing about whether or not it serves fish. I got in and order fish, and then report to you guys. Then it gets denied.</p>
<p>I agree with charlie. Avid readers have a substantial advantage on SAT, and surveys have shown that those who actually read books (not for the test, and 5 months earlier, but for a much greater time span) do much better on the SAT. Reasoning skills is indeed what is being tested, but reading books practices you much better than reading SAT passages, let alone the fact that it's funnier.</p>
<p>stix has a point. you would probably be better off doing more review books than reading, although that's not to say you shouldn't read at least a little. do a little of both, see what works.</p>
<p>In my days in high school, no one in my region of the country took SAT prep courses, and I don't think our libraries or bookstores in those days (the 1970s) had any cram or prep books at all. The kids in my school district (three high schools) who scored highest on the SAT were all avid readers. They read books that were not assigned in class, and talked with one another about interesting books and magazines that they read. We didn't do test prep in those days, but we "naturally" scored high on the SAT. (One of us, with no more preparation for the test than reading the test description booklet the week before the test, after taking the PSAT the year before, got a recentered 800 on the verbal section and a 770 on the math section, which was "only" 770 verbal and 750 math under the old scoring rules.) </p>
<p>To answer the OP's question, read about what you like to know about. You will develop your critical reading skills the fastest if you care about what the authors are writing about. For example, if you care about computer games, you could do worse than reading books about the game industry, and reading comparative reviews of games (do you agree with the reviews?), and reading magazine articles about forthcoming games. If you have a pet, read about that kind of animal. If you have a hobby, read about it. </p>
<p>You can also ask teachers and other trusted adults for recommendations of things to read that will broaden your education. Some college applications specifically offer an opportunity to list books you've read in the two years before applying to college, and it would be a lot cooler to list some famous books that adults read for personal development in your application rather than just SAT cram books. The American Library Association </p>
<p>Outstanding</a> Books for the College Bound </p>
<p>Web site will provide you with plenty of reading suggestions, and if you read the books listed there that you like, you will be learning about interesting facts and about good writing as well as improving your ability on the SAT I.</p>