If there is one thing that can be said for civil services exam, it is the perception of reading a large no. of books to be successful. When you had first planned to start preparation for civils, many questions like, ‘you will have to do a lot of hard work, will you?’ or ‘you will need to study a lot of books, will you?’ would had been asked from you. These questions, unknowingly, create a mindset that if you will not read “so many” books, you will not succeed.
This mindset gets another shot when you visit hot centres of civil services exam, like Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Allahabad, Jaipur etc. You see people carrying loads of books. Hundreds of book shops & photocopy shops filled with books & photocopies to the neck. Third major fillip to your belief that you must read many books comes when you start consulting seniors, peers, booksellers or even the photocopy shops. Suggestions will soon pour for joining Telegram channels, WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages, download Apps, and so on.