# Thug Notes

Thug Notes is an American educational web series that summarizes and analyzes various literary works in a comedic manner. Thug Notes first aired on June 3, 2013, on YouTube, with the pilot episode centered on Crime and Punishment. The host of the series is Sparky Sweets, Ph.D., portrayed by actor and comedian Greg Edwards. In 2015, a book of essays based on episodes from the series entitled Thug Notes: A Street-Smart Guide to Classic Literature was published by Vintage Books.

## Style

The series is presented by Greg Edwards in character as Sparky Sweets, Ph.D; the character hosts the series in an "original gangster" style.
The following is an example of Sweets' style from his analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of his most popular: "Only a jive-ass fool would bother capping a mockingbird, 'cause all them bitches do is just drop next-level beats for your enjoyment. So what my girl Harper trying to say is ratting on Boo Radley wouldn't do no good. It would only rid the hood of one more true-blue player."
Explaining the usage of African-American Vernacular English within the series, Edwards stated, "but the truth is, the gift of literature is universal in meaning and should be made accessible to everyone on every plane. So, Thug Notes is my way of trivializing academia's attempt at making literature exclusionary by showing that even high-brow academic concepts can be communicated in a clear and open fashion." The style used by Edwards' character was a result of "frustration with the world of academia".

## Episodes

| # | Book | Author | Note |
| 1 | Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoevsky | |
| 2 | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | |
| 3 | To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | |
| 4 | Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | |
| 5 | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | |
| 6 | Lord of the Flies | William Golding | |
| 7 | Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | |
| 8 | The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger | |
| 9 | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë | |
| 10 | Hamlet | William Shakespeare | |
| 11 | The Hobbit | J. R. R. Tolkien | |
| 12 | Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck | |
| 13 | Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | |
| 14 | Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | |
| 15 | Beowulf | Unknown | |
| 16 | Animal Farm | George Orwell | |
| 17 | Moby-Dick | Herman Melville | |
| 18 | Odyssey | Homer | |
| 19 | The Scarlet Letter | Nathaniel Hawthorne | |
| 20 | Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | Halloween Special |
| 21 | Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | |
| 22 | Macbeth | William Shakespeare | |
| 23 | The Crucible | Arthur Miller | |
| 24 | Inferno | Dante Alighieri | |
| 25 | The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway | |
| 26 | Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison | |
| 27 | Notes from Underground | Fyodor Dostoevsky | |
| 28 | Romeo and Juliet | William Shakespeare | |
| 29 | Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë | |
| 30 | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | |
| 31 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| 32 | All Quiet on the Western Front | Erich Maria Remarque | |
| 33 | Oedipus the King | Sophocles | Valentine's Day Special |
| 34 | A Separate Peace | John Knowles | |
| 35 | Slaughterhouse-Five | Kurt Vonnegut | |
| 36 | Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | |
| 37 | Grendel | John Gardner | |
| 38 | Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | |
| 39 | Ethan Frome | Edith Wharton | |
| 40 | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain | |
| 41 | The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner | |
| 42 | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | James Joyce | |
| 43 | The Stranger | Albert Camus | |
| 44 | The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway | |
| 45 | The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | |
| 46 | The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck | |
| 47 | The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoevsky | |
| 48 | The Grand Inquisitor | Fyodor Dostoevsky | |
| 49 | Dune | Frank Herbert | |
| 50 | At the Mountains of Madness | H. P. Lovecraft | |
| 51 | The Giver | Lois Lowry | |
| 52 | The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins | |
| 53 | The Metamorphosis | Franz Kafka | |
| 54 | One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel García Márquez | |
| 55 | Dracula | Bram Stoker | Halloween Special |
| 56 | Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare | |
| 57 | A Clockwork Orange | Anthony Burgess | |
| 58 | Death of a Salesman | Arthur Miller | |
| 59 | Othello | William Shakespeare | |
| 60 | A Christmas Carol | Charles Dickens | Christmas Special |
| 61 | The Raven | Edgar Allan Poe | |
| 62 | A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens | |
| 63 | A Raisin in the Sun | Lorraine Hansberry | Black History Month Special |
| 64 | Beloved | Toni Morrison | Black History Month Special |
| 65 | The Color Purple | Alice Walker | Black History Month Special |
| 66 | The Tell-Tale Heart | Edgar Allan Poe | |
| 67 | Fifty Shades of Grey | E. L. James | BET Short Episode |
| 68 | Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | |
| 69 | Siddhartha | Hermann Hesse | |
| 70 | The Handmaid's Tale | Margaret Atwood | |
| 71 | Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | |
| 72 | The Cat in the Hat | Dr. Seuss | Mother's Day Special |
| 73 | Watchmen | Alan Moore | |
| 74 | King Lear | William Shakespeare | |
| 75 | A Game of Thrones | George R. R. Martin | Part 1 of the A Song of Ice and Fire series |
| 76 | A Midsummer Night's Dream | William Shakespeare | |
| 77 | The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt | |
| 78 | The Outsiders | S.E. Hinton | |
| 79 | Go Set a Watchman | Harper Lee | |
| 80 | Doctor Faustus | Christopher Marlowe | |
| 81 | Ender's Game | Orson Scott Card | |
| 82 | The Fellowship of the Ring | J. R. R. Tolkien | Part 1 of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy |
| 83 | V for Vendetta | Alan Moore | |
| 84 | Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes | |
| 85 | The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | C. S. Lewis | |
| 86 | No Country for Old Men | Cormac McCarthy | |
| 87 | Les Misérables | Victor Hugo | |
| 88 | The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | |
| 89 | Life of Pi | Yann Martel | |
| 90 | Where the Red Fern Grows | Wilson Rawls | |
| 91 | The Fountainhead | Ayn Rand | |
| 92 | American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis | |
| 93 | The Cask of Amontillado | Edgar Allan Poe | |
| 94 | Fight Club | Chuck Palahniuk | |
| 95 | A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L'Engle | |
| 96 | The Fall of the House of Usher | Edgar Allan Poe | |
| 97 | The Epic of Gilgamesh | Sîn-lēqi-unninni | |
| 98 | Madame Bovary | Gustave Flaubert | |
| 99 | The Trial | Franz Kafka | |
| 100 | The Merchant of Venice | William Shakespeare | |
| 101 | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Ken Kesey | |
| 102 | Where the Wild Things Are | Maurice Sendak | |
| 103 | Horton Hears a Who! | Theodor Seuss Geisel | |
| 104 | Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde | Robert Louis Stevenson | |
| 105 | Ready Player One | Ernest Cline | |
| 106 | No Country for Old Men The Great Gatsby The Hobbit | Cormac McCarthy F. Scott Fitzgerald J. R. R. Tolkien | This episode promoted the new podcast Thug Notes: Get Lit |
| 107 | It | Stephen King | |
| 108 | Emma | Jane Austen | |

## Reception

Thug Notes has been met with a cumulative view total of over 160 million (as of June 2017) and critical acclaim. Thug Notes's virality has been documented by mainstream news publications such as The New York Times and HuffPost. The Tampa Bay Times has noted that the series can be used as an educational tool.
In 2014, Wisecrack/Thug Notes was listed on NewMediaRockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #94.