In 2016, the number of book-related Oscar nominees is higher than usual.
Usually, from five to seven movies that received Oscar nominations, are related to books.
This year, we counted as much as nine such book-related nominations. They are either adapted from books or inspired by books.
Among the book-related Oscar nominees you’ll see all five contenders in Adapted Screenplay category: The Big Short, Brooklyn, Carol, Room, and, obviously, The Martian.
There are also movies that received nominations in other categories, although they didn’t make it to Adapted Screenplay.
Steve Jobs is inspired by a biography by Walter Isaacson. The Revenant pictures events from the book by Michael Punke. And there is The Danish Girl based on the novel by David Ebershoff.
Want to read the book before going to the movies? Here are nine Oscar 2016 nominations that are based on books.
Brooklyn
The movie directed by John Crowley was nominated for Best Picture. Saoirse Ronan got a nomination for Best Actress. And, obviously, there is also a nomination in Adapted Screenplay category – Nick Hornby adapted the book to the big screen.
The book is set in the early 1950s, and tells a story of a young woman torn between her family in Ireland and the American who wins her heart.
The Martian
This science-fiction movie starring Matt Damon has received as much as seven nominations. Besides Adapted Screenplay, there are nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Visual Effects.
Colm Toibin
From the award-winning author of The Master, a hauntingly compelling novel set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s about a young woman torn between her family in Ireland and the American who wins her heart.
Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, Eilis cannot find a proper job in the miserable Irish economy.
When an Irish priest from Brooklyn visits the household and offers to sponsor Eilis in America — to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood “just like Ireland” — she realizes she must go, leaving her fragile mother and sister behind.
Room
Emma Donoghue
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play.
Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough…not for her or for him.
She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Michael Lewis
The #1 New York Times bestseller: a brilliant account ― character-rich and darkly humorous ― of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff.
When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news.
The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine, and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower – and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts.
The Price of Salt, or Carol
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith’s story of romantic obsession may be one of the most important, but still largely unrecognized, novels of the twentieth century. First published in 1952 and touted as “the novel of a love that society forbids, ” the book soon became a cult classic.
Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith’s own life, Carol tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job.
Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese’s job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society’s confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation.
