Staff Picks
Our Oscars reading list
02.07.14
Oscar season is here. Every year I try to watch as many of the movies that received major nominations as I can. So I have quite a viewing queue to get through before the 86th Academy Awards show airs on March 2. This year I have a pretty long reading list too, since more than half of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture began as books.
This collection is a study in the power a true story can hold over our imaginations:
Twelve Years a Slave
By Solomon Northup
A Captain's Duty
By Richard Phillips
Philomena
By Martin Sixsmith
The Wolf of Wall Street
By Jordan Belfort
The Sting Man (American Hustle)
By Robert W. Green
Other books that generated Oscar nominations this year are:
- August, Osage County by Tracy Letts
- Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin
- The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Invincible Iron Man by Stan Lee
- Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen (Frozen)
- Ernest & Celestine by Gabrielle Vincent
Does a great movie motivate you to read the book that inspired it? What would your vote be for Best Book Adapted to Film?