Mean-Spirited Way:

Focus only on examinations: TOEFL, SAT, GRE, GMAT, IELTS, ( Academic ), IBDP (Literature) if you meet any of these 3 requirements.

  1. You have great talent in another area such as Arts, Sports, Science, Technology or Business.
  2. You have rich, famous, powerful connections.
  3. You don't mind suffering later in life.

Fun Way:

Follow your passion, or curiosity, or even whim.
Then, you well do well in exams, as well as in life.
Enjoy 20% of the following books and do well in any English exam.

Lengthy Reading:

War and Peace (Read it in 1 night. And write it in 5 months using Tolstoy's hacker way),
The Brothers Karamazov,
Crime and Punishment,
On War (Clausewitz),
Journey to the West,
Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
Water Margin,
Dreams of Red Chambers,
Golden Lotus(4 Volumes),
Lord of Perfect Satisfaction, The Carnal Prayer Mat
Musashi(Novel),
Bible (Old/New Testament),
Digha Nikaya,
Majjhima Nikaya,
Samyutta Nikaya

Science Reading:

Einstein's Fridge,
Einstein's Boss,
Beyond Weird,
Hawking Hawking,
Fear of a Black Universe,
The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos,
Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character,
Nature (magazine),
New Scientist(magazine)

Tech Reading:

AI a Modern Approach(Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig),
Deep Learning with Python (Chollet),
Daily Coding Problems,
Coders at Work,
Extreme Programming(Kent Beck),
Refactoring(Martin Fowler),
MongoDB Fundamentals,
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering( Richard R. Hamming),
Ideas and Information: Managing in a High-Tech World(Arno Penzias),
Innovating: A Doer's Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong (Luis Perez-Breva),
Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World,

Deep Reading:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance( Robert M. Pirsig),
Art of War(Sun Tzu, Sun Bin)(Has anyone summarized Sun Tzu in 4 words?)
I Ching,
Tao Te Ching,
Book of Five Rings,
Patterns of Conflict(Boyd),
Mao's Invisible Hand,
Yiddishe Kop

Wide Reading:

Unlimited Warfare,
The Savior Generals,
Defensive Shield,
Startup Nation,
Unstoppable Startup,
Chutzpah: Why Israel Is a Hub of Innovation and Entrepreneurship,
Grapes of Wrath,
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Tenali Rama stories,
Jataka stories,
One Thousand and One Nights,
The Elements of Eloquence(Mark Forsyth)(Geniuses may be using "robotic" formulas you don't suspect!!),
Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment
Influence

Silicon (Valley) Reading:

Wide Lens,
Becoming Steve Jobs,
Steve Jobs(Walter Isaacson),
Judo Strategy,
Blue Ocean Strategy
Innovator's Dilemma,
Only the Paranoid Survive,
Ask Your Developer,
Effective Executive(Drucker),
Innovation and Entrepreneurship(Drucker),
Growth Hacker Marketing,
Hacking Growth,
Brain vs Capital,
Unscale,
Not for Bread Alone(Matsushita),
Matsushita Leadership,
Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age,
Zero to One,
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon


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