Hello and welcome to season four of Crash Course Literature. That's right, we're back to talk about books.

So this season, for no particular reason, we're going to be talking about a lot of dystopias. You know, future worlds where things have gone terrible wrong, as opposed to the present where everything is going fantastically.

So we're going to be reading uh, George Orwell's 1984. We've got The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I know that you like the TV show, I agree with you that it's excellent, but the book, as usual, even better.

We've got my personal, all time favourite dystopia, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. If you haven't read this book, you need to read it immediately because how else are you going to have nightmares for the next six months. I'm kidding, although I do actually sometimes have nightmares set in the world of Parable of the Sower.

And we're also going to be reading Candide by Voltaire which is kind of a dystopian book but mostly like an aggressively anti-utopian book.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is also kind of a dystopia though it was written about a world that was actually happening.

Macbeth is not quite dystopian but let me submit that life under the Macbeth regime wouldn't have been ideal.

We're also going to be reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf which is inarguably the best book ever written partly from the perspective of a house.

And lastly we're gonna read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, the most requested book at Crash Course Literature over the last three seasons. I'm so excited for when we finally get to Pride and Prejudice because it is a book where no one gets murdered or gets syphilis or gets imprisoned in their own home and also there is love in it.

But before the love, my friends, will come much suffering of almost every variety. This year in Crash Course Literature we're going to be talking about genre and gender roles and governments and the question of free will.

I hope you'll join me in reading or re-reading all of these books. So head over to your local library and check 'em out!

Thanks for watching and I'll see you next week when we begin our discussion of George Orwell's 1984. Well actually, I won't see you, Don't worry, Google's ad-tracking software will.