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 Beaux Arts 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
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Becket by Anouilh
A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
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 Beaux Arts 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
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Becket by Anouilh
A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt