8 Oscar-Worthy Books

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Some of the year’s most celebrated movies got their start as novels or non-fiction books. Here, 8 Oscar-worthy tomes for your 88th Academy Awards reading list.

 

ROOM (Little, Brown and Company) by Emma Donoghue

Emma Donoghue’s 2010 book, Room, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The story follows a 5-year-old boy who lives with his kidnapped mother, locked inside a single-room outbuilding. The film, based on the book, has garnered four nominations: Best Picture, Directing, Actress (Brie Larson), and Adapted Screenplay.

BROOKLYN (Scribner) by Colm Tóibín

The film, directed by John Crowley and nominated for Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay, is based on a novel by Irish author Colm Tóibín. The story, set in New York during the early 1950s, is about a young woman torn between her family back in Ireland and her new life in America.

 

THE MARTIAN (Crown) by Andy Weir

In the movie based on Andy Weir’s 2011 self-published sci-fi novel, The Martian, Ridley Scott directs Matt Damon in the story of an astronaut’s efforts to survive after being left behind on Mars. (The book was re-released by Crown several years later, in 2014). The movie has been nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Adapted Screenplay and Visual Effects.

THE PRICE OF SALT, or CAROL (Dover Publications) by Patricia Highsmith

Based on the 1952 book The Price of Salt, the movie version (called Carol) has earned six nominations, including Best Actress for Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara for Supporting Actress. Considered a pioneering work of lesbian romance, Carol tells the story of a housewife who falls in love with a younger woman and as a result, becomes embroiled in a bitter divorce.

THE DANISH GIRL (Penguin) by David Ebershoff

In yet another pioneering work, this love story is based loosely on the life of Danish painter Lili Elbe, one of the first people known to undergo gender reassignment surgery. The movie, starring Eddie Redmayne, took four nominations including Best Actor.

 

THE REVENANT: A NOVEL OF REVENGE (Picador) by Michael Punke

Director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu’s (Birdman) adaption of Michael Punke’s The Revenant stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a frontiersman on an 1823 fur trading expedition. After being mauled by a bear, his company leaves him for dead. The movie is nominated in no less than 12 categories.

THE BIG SHORT: INSIDE THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE (WW Norton) by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis’s darkly comic account of how the US economy was driven over the cliff gets the Hollywood treatment from the likes of Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale. The film took several nominations including Best Picture, Directing, and Supporting Actor.

STEVE JOBS by Walter Isaccson

Based on the 2011 biography by Water Isaccson, the film about tech visionary, Steve Jobs, stars Michael Fassbender, who was nominated for Best Actor, and Kate Winslet who is up for Supporting Actress.

 

The 88th Academy Awards show will air on February 28, 2016.