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I am looking for good advice regarding improving reading and comprehension of text in lsat, law school and academia in general.
I did not do much reading besides the required reading for class. FYI English is my 3rd language.
A lot of people here swear by The Economics Magazine or Scientific America. I am planning to make reading daily routine, like 2 hours a day on reading something.
Would you recommend those magazine that i listed above?, or should i get into novels? like

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee,1984 by George Orwell,Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen,The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller or even Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Which one is very helpfull, reading econmonist magazine or Novel?

Thanks.

The books you've listed are very different in styles and density. Also, Crime and Punishment is translated, so I wouldn't start with that (unless one of your first 2 languages is Russian or something and you've already read it, then it might be very good). I would honestly read all of the books, and of the magazines, pick whichever one has subject matter more interesting to you.

I'd go with the magazines - for the most part, the novels you listed aren't very good choices. Economist is recommended by a good number of people for general LSAT reading.

WHAT you read is not nearly as important as HOW MUCH you read. Read whatever you like best, whether thats Crime and Punishment or People Magazine. Try to do it 5-10 hours a day if you've got nothing else over the summer. I recommend reading all of John Grisham's books to get you in the mood.

How did you graduate college, let alone high school, without reading those novels

Veyron wrote:WHAT you read is not nearly as important as HOW MUCH you read.

+1

dr123 wrote:How did you graduate college, let alone high school, without reading those novels

He said English was his third language. How'd you get through the post without reading that?

shoeshine wrote:

Veyron wrote:WHAT you read is not nearly as important as HOW MUCH you read.

+1

+2.

Kabuo wrote:The books you've listed are very different in styles and density. Also, Crime and Punishment is translated, so I wouldn't start with that (unless one of your first 2 languages is Russian or something and you've already read it, then it might be very good). I would honestly read all of the books, and of the magazines, pick whichever one has subject matter more interesting to you.

Thanks for your advice. NO, russian is not one of my first language. If you were to choose one, will u read novel only or magazine?
Magazine kinda price for subscription, online is free but not full article as subscription. Novel sound good idea, most of good novel might be out of print aned available online to read free.
Are these good one too or Not?
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1984 by George Orwell
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Ulysses by James Joyce
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Watership Down by Richard Adams
His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Stand by Stephen King
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Dune by Frank Herbert
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Middlemarch by George Eliot
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Emma by Jane Austen
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Siddharta by Hermann Hesse
The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Responded to your PM. You can post it here if you feel it'd be helpful.

Relatedly, you might want to check out the Purdue Online Writing Center. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
It gives you a lots of tips and tricks about getting your good English to great. It won't directly help your reading, but as your reading develops, make sure your writing keeps pace. I teach academic English as a 3rd language, so if you have any more questions (or want more free advice ), shoot me a PM

Veyron wrote:WHAT you read is not nearly as important as HOW MUCH you read. Read whatever you like best, whether thats Crime and Punishment or People Magazine. Try to do it 5-10 hours a day if you've got nothing else over the summer. I recommend reading all of John Grisham's books to get you in the mood.

Thank you. how much as to what to read is your suggestion. Great. I have listed some novel in this post above or below.
Off course, i would like to read current intellectual novel for geared to graduate student. I don't really want to read novel for 8th grader or 12 grader. I am looking for university level reading, might help me in law school or poli science graduaete school reading, whichever i end up. Do you know if these are university level reading or are they for general public/high school? am not really familiar with them or who are audience/reader geared.

thanks

adam.123 wrote:

Veyron wrote:WHAT you read is not nearly as important as HOW MUCH you read. Read whatever you like best, whether thats Crime and Punishment or People Magazine. Try to do it 5-10 hours a day if you've got nothing else over the summer. I recommend reading all of John Grisham's books to get you in the mood.

Thank you. how much as to what to read is your suggestion. Great. I have listed some novel in this post above or below.
Off course, i would like to read current intellectual novel for geared to graduate student. I don't really want to read novel for 8th grader or 12 grader. I am looking for university level reading, might help me in law school or poli science graduaete school reading, whichever i end up. Do you know if these are university level reading or are they for general public/high school? am not really familiar with them or who are audience/reader geared.

thanks

Given the quality of writing in this post, it can't hurt to read some stuff for 8th-12th graders. Besides, most paperback novels for adults don't have a "grade level."

Also, when you read literary classics, you aren't really learning how English is actually used in a day-to-day context. Thats why you should stick to simple novels that you enjoy. For 99% of the thinks you'll ever want to do, clear and simple writing >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> complex and flowery writing, ESPECIALLY in law.

I agree that you should read things that interest you, that's what most native English speakers do. Also, read novels that were written in English. Russian happens to be my second language and I have read some English novels in Russian and it is nowhere near as helpful as reading a Russian novel, unless it is something that you have read in your native language and you are very familiar with the text.

You've listed a lot of classics and I have only read a few of them. Lord of the Rings will expand your vocabulary more than Twilight. But if you love Vampires and Werewolves and think that Orcs and Elves are boring, read Twilight.