Essays & Ideas

We recommend starting with Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay — the essays are sharp, personal, and written in a voice that is immediately engaging, making it one of the most accessible entry points into serious essay writing. If you prefer something more classic, A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf is a landmark of the form — concise, elegant, and packed with ideas. Both reward careful reading and are excellent preparation for exam-style RC passages.

Essays are the single genre that most directly mirrors the RC passage format. Reading them builds three skills simultaneously: argument tracking — following a complex idea as it develops and qualifies itself across several paragraphs; tone identification — recognising the subtle differences between ironic, critical, celebratory, and ambivalent voices; and inference — understanding what an author implies rather than states. These are precisely the skills tested by the most difficult RC questions on CAT, GRE, and GMAT.

Elementary: Accessible essays with conversational voices, clear arguments, and contemporary subjects — ideal for building confidence with the form. Intermediate: More complex argumentation, richer vocabulary, and ideas that require active engagement to follow. Advanced: Dense cultural and literary criticism demanding sustained concentration and broad background knowledge. Master: The most challenging essay writing in the language — works like Foster Wallace’s longer pieces that push the boundaries of the form itself.

Read the full collection whenever possible. Individual essays are short, but the value of a collection comes from reading across it — encountering the same author’s mind applied to different subjects reveals patterns of thought, recurring concerns, and a distinctive voice that a single essay or a review cannot convey. Our reviews help you understand what to look for in each collection; the mastery quiz then tests whether you have engaged with the arguments at exam depth.

Essay collections are among the most flexible in our library — individual essays can be read in a single sitting, making this category ideal for days when you have limited time. At 1 hour of reading per day, most collections take 1–2 weeks. We recommend reading one essay at a time and pausing to reflect on the argument before moving to the next — the density of ideas in great essays rewards slow, deliberate reading far more than speed.

Yes — and for this category, the match is especially close. Our quizzes are modelled on CAT, GRE, and GMAT question patterns — testing inference, author’s tone, main idea, vocabulary in context, and logical structure. For essay titles, every one of these question types is directly relevant, since essays demand exactly the skills each question type tests. Readers who engage seriously with this category often find that RC passages begin to feel familiar rather than unfamiliar — which is the ultimate exam advantage.