These are the readings that you should have read before graduating from KKFS. These works represent the most significant thoughts and feelings in Western and modern culture. They are constantly referenced. Familiarity with them enriches your life and helps you make sense of who you are and why the world is the way it is.
Non-Fiction The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Coleman Focus by Daniel Coleman The Brain Rules by John Medina Drive by Daniel Pink Bounce by Matthew Syed Mindset by Carol Dweck Flow by Czikszentmihalyi The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Poems(Most of these poems can be found in our library in The Top 500 Poems or on the internet) Western Wind by anonymous The Passionate Shepherd to his Love by Christopher Marlowe My Last Duchess by Robert Browning Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson Ithaka by C.P. Cavafy Kubla Khan by S.T. Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S.T. Coleridge Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn “ La Belle Dame Sans Merci “ Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode: Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (Daffodils) by Wordsworth The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats Sailing to Byzantium “ Leda and the Swan “ Musee des BeauxArts by W.H. Auden Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe Fog by Carl Sandburg The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot Digging by Seamus Heaney Gilgamesh The Iliad by Homer (Fagles translation recommended) The Odyssey by Homer (Fitzgerald or Fagles translation recommended) The Aeneid by Virgil (Fitzgerald or Fagles translation recommended) Metamorphoses by Ovid (Charles Martin translation recommended. This is best single collection of Greek myths. Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation recommended) The Divine Comedy by Dante (Dorothy Sayers translation recommended) The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (Middle English is best but Neville Coghill’s modern version is excellent) Paradise Lost by John Milton
Fiction Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift The Little Prince by Antoine Saint Exupery A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marquez Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Don Quixote by Cervantes (part 1) Candide by Voltaire
Plays Hamlet by Shakespeare Macbeth by Shakespeare Othello by Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare Julius Caesar by Shakespeare Oedipus Rex by Sophocles Becket by Anouilh A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt