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Rohan stared at the thick, orange-covered book on his desk. Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension for CAT by Arun Sharma. To him, it looked less like a book and more like a door that refused to open.

By the end of his prep, Rohan found himself reading The Economist, Aeon essays, and even Supreme Court judgments with curiosity, not dread. When D-Day arrived, the CAT’s VARC section felt familiar. He finished with 8 minutes to spare—a miracle for the boy who once read like he was wading through mud.

The book didn’t begin with a drill. It began with a story—about how the author once struggled with a 1200-word passage on ancient Greek warfare. The solution wasn’t speed-reading tricks. It was understanding structure . Arun Sharma broke down reading into a formula: . Suddenly, every paragraph became a map.

But the real change happened on a rainy Tuesday.

Years later, as a product manager in Bengaluru, Rohan still has that orange-covered book on his shelf. Worn, underlined, dog-eared. A reminder that sometimes, the door you’re afraid to open leads to the room you were always meant to find. Arun Sharma’s book works not because it has “secrets,” but because it builds systematic thinking—breaking reading into manageable patterns and replacing fear with familiarity. For any CAT aspirant, it’s not just a book; it’s a mentor that scales with you.

“The problem isn’t your intelligence,” his mentor had said. “It’s your approach. Read Arun Sharma. Not just the exercises—read the strategy sections.”

His accuracy climbed from 40% to 75% in three weeks.

He was an engineer. Numbers were his friends. But words? They slipped through his fingers like sand. In mock tests, his RC scores were a desert—dry, barren, and full of mirages. He’d read a passage on post-modernist art or economic policy, and by the time he reached the questions, his mind was a foggy echo chamber.

The result? A 98.7 percentile in VARC. And a quiet realization: the book hadn’t just taught him verbal ability. It had taught him how to think in a foreign language—the language of arguments, assumptions, and author intent.


Verbal Ability And Reading Comprehension For Cat By Arun

Verbal Ability And Reading Comprehension For Cat By Arun

Verbal Ability And Reading Comprehension For Cat By Arun

Verbal Ability And Reading Comprehension For Cat By Arun

Verbal Ability And Reading Comprehension For Cat By Arun

Verbal Ability And Reading Comprehension For Cat By Arun



Verbal Ability And Reading Comprehension For Cat By Arun
Viral: A Modern Call of Cthulhu Scenario $12.95 $7.77
Publisher: Chaosium
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by Taylor D. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/24/2023 10:51:36

My players are loving it, and I love running it! I'm literally in the middle of running it, but I just had to write this review while it was fresh in my mind. Here's what I have to say after 1 of 2 sessions!

The Book: Really well organized, sucinct, and an awesome narrative. It's very tight and logically structured with some pretty awesome artwork all over! The updated content found in the Unredacted version (you get both PDFs) is very logical and a natural prologue AND ending. As a DM who runs pretty much exclusively online, the PDF version is perfect. Hyperlinked, annotatable, and with all of the handouts and pre-gen sheets listed seperately. Very nice!

The Game: The first session I ran started from Perla and ended at the hospital, running for about 4 hours with a 5-10 minute break every hour and a half. Like most Call of Cthulhu scenarios, there is little (I would honestly say "no") combat, which has been fine for my players. I run for a really diverse group of players, from folks who have been playing for decades to folks who only started playing a few months ago, and each of them said SEPERATELY that this first session was the most fun AND fear they've ever experienced in a TTRPG session EVER. I would say that I set the tone at more comedy-leaning than serious, but as we've spent more time on the island, it's suddenly not all "just a prank" anymore. I didn't anticipate this, not going to lie, so I would like to emphasize the importance of a session 0, even for a oneshot, even with players you run for regularly, as I had a few moments with my players that I'm glad we hashed out before the session because it only allowed them to have even more fun.

Some themes/concepts I would warn the players about are: Loss of player agency (BEYOND the usual insanity mechanics of Call of Cthulhu), possible player in-fighting or betrayal, bugs (so many bugs.....), close encounters with the dead...And if you're thinking to yourself, "Duh, those things are just in CoC games!" I'd like to remind you that no one is too cool to learn the rules and boundaries. Have the "no-brainer" talk now so they can enjoy the game to its fullest later. You won't regret it.

The Handouts/Pre-Gens: My players LOVE the Spektral Krew. They're simultaneously people my players would never create AND people we've all definitely met in person. I think everyone puts their own unexpected "flavor" on their version of the Krew, so you'll end up with a unique experience for everyone you run it for! My one and only complaint is that I think the concept of "the taint" is amazing, but could be even MORE amazing if it was, to some degree, hidden from the players (with their consent--see above). From what I'm noticing, their exposure is rising pretty slowly, but as they all slowly get sicker and sicker, that fear of like, "oh my god what's happening to us" is continuing to grow, and I can't wait for them to hit the climax. I'd love a version of the character sheets without the exposure tracker

Overall, this is honestly my favorite scenario I've run so far, and I look forward to finishing it out! Am eagerly awaiting the sequel--keep up the amazing work!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Viral: A Modern Call of Cthulhu Scenario
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