Books Made into Oscar-Nominated Films

Before they were nominated for Academy Awards, these stories were books. Which do you prefer, the book or the movie?

Updated March 17, 2025
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12 years a slave : a true story of betrayal, kidnap and slavery
Northup, Solomon
Paper Book
The astonishing memoir of a free man who was sold into slavery in Louisiana where he was kept for 12 years--a powerful, riveting condemnation of slavery, and a story soon to be introduced to a...

306.362 N819 2013

Nomadland : surviving America in the twenty-first century
Bruder, Jessica
Paper Book
From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon's CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on...

331.398 Bruder 2017

Black Panther. Book 1A nation under our feet
Coates, Ta-Nehisi
Paper Book
MacArthur Genius and National Book Award-winner T- Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me) takes the helm, confronting T'Challa with a dramatic upheaval in Wakanda. When a superhuman terrorist group that calls itself The People sparks a violent uprising, the land famed for its incredible technology...
Room
Donoghue, Emma
Paper Book
WINNER! 2010 Rogers Writers' Trust Award for Fiction SHORTLISTED for the 2010 Man Booker Prize SHORTLISTED for the 2010 Governor General's Award To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It’s where he was born and where he and his Ma eat and play and learn....
Killers of the Flower Moon : The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
Grann, David
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, "one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."--New York...

970.3 Osage Grann 2017

Travelling to infinity : my life with Stephen
Hawking, Jane
Paper Book
Complete with exclusive photographs of the couple, this moving and engaging memoir written by Stephen Hawking’s first wife covers the turbulent years of her marriage with the astrophysics genius, her traumatic divorce, and their recent reconciliation  <...

530.092 H313yh 2014

Seabiscuit : an American legend
Hillenbrand, Laura
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend. "Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only...

798.4 H557 2003

Alan Turing : the enigma
Hodges, Andrew.
Paper Book
The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley Alan Turing was the mathematician whose cipher-cracking transformed the Second World War. Taken on by British Intelligence in 1938, as a shy young...

510.92 T846yh 2014

Les misérables
Hugo, Victor
Paper Book
It has been said that Victor Hugo has a street named after him in virtually every town in France. A major reason for the singular celebrity of this most popular and versatile of the great French writers is Les Misérables (1862). In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean--a...
Hidden figures : the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race
Shetterly, Margot Lee.
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times bestseller The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space--a powerful, revelatory history essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in...

510.92 L516 2016

The big short : inside the doomsday machine
Lewis, Michael
Paper Book
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...

330.973 L587

The blind side : evolution of a game
Lewis, Michael
Paper Book
The young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League. When we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday,...
Moneyball : the art of winning an unfair game
Lewis, Michael
Paper Book
Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only "the single most influential baseball...

796.357 Lewis 2003

The king's speech
Logue, Mark.
Paper Book
The King's Speech is the previously untold story of the extraordinary relationship between an unknown and certainly unqualified speech therapist called Lionel Logue and the haunted young man who became King George VI. Logue wasn't a British aristocrat or even an Englishman--he was a commoner...

941.084 L829yL 2010

Wicked / #1 Wicked Years
Maguire, Gregory.
Paper Book
The New York Times bestseller and basis for the Tony-winning hit musical, soon to be a major motion picture starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande With millions of copies in print around the world, Gregory Maguire's Wicked is established not only as a commentary on...
Life of Pi
Martel, Yann.
Paper Book
Life of Pi is at once the story of a young castaway who faces immeasurable hardships on the high seas, and a meditation on religion, faith, art and life that is as witty as it is profound. Using the threads of all of our best stories, Yann Martel has woven a glorious spiritual adventure that...
Atonement
McEwan, Ian
Paper Book
On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her too is Robbie Turner who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the...
War horse
Morpurgo, Michael.
Paper Book
A powerful tale of war, redemption, and a hero's journey. In 1914, Joey, a beautiful bay-red foal with a distinctive cross on his nose, is sold to the army and thrust into the midst of the war on the Western Front. With his officer, he charges toward the enemy, witnessing the...
A beautiful mind : the life of mathematical genius and Nobel Laureate Josh Nash
Nasar, Sylvia
Paper Book
In a masterful blend of biography and science writing, Nasar traces John Forbes Nash, Jr.'s rise to the heights of intellectual achievement and his harrowing descent from eccentricity to insanity. Released as a major motion picture directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe and Ed Harris.
Desolation island
O'Brian, Patrick
Paper Book
"The relationship [between Aubrey and Maturin]...is about the best thing afloat....For Conradian power of description and sheer excitement there is nothing in naval fiction to beat the stern chase as the outgunned Leopard staggers through mountain waves i
The revenant : a novel of revenge
Punke, Michael.
Paper Book
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A thrilling tale of betrayal and revenge set against the nineteenth-century American frontier, Michael Punke's The Revenant is the astonishing story of real-life trapper and frontiersman Hugh...
All quiet on the Western front
Remarque, Erich Maria
Paper Book
The masterpiece of the German experience during World War I, considered by many the greatest war novel of all time--with an Oscar-winning film adaptation now streaming on Netflix.   "[Erich Maria Remarque] is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank."--...
The reader
Schlink, Bernhard.
Paper Book
A schoolboy in post-war Germany, Michael collapses one day in the street and is helped home by a woman in her thirties. This older woman fascinates him, and he and Hanna begin a secretive affair. Gradually, he begins to be frustrated by their relationship, but then is shocked when Hanna simply...
The help
Stockett, Kathryn.
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times bestselling novel and basis for the Academy Award-winning film--a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't--nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. Aibileen is a...
Women talking : a novel
Toews, Miriam
Paper Book
A FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD: A transformative and necessary work--as completely unexpected as it is inspired--by the award-winning author of the bestselling novels All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness. The sun rises on a quiet June...
The fellowship of the ring : being the first part of The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Paper Book
The opening novel of The Lord of the Rings--the greatest fantasy epic of all time--which continues in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.   Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read...
The return of the king
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Paper Book
The Return of the King is the third volume in J.R.R. Tolkien_s epic adventure, The Lord of the Rings, voted Book of the Century in major polls.The armies of the Dark Lord are massing as his evil shadow spreads ever wider. Men, Dwarves, Elves and Ents unite forces to do battle agains the Dark....
The two towers
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Paper Book
The Two Towers is the second volume in J.R.R. Tolkien_s epic adventure, The Lord of the Rings, voted Book of the Century in major polls.The Company of the Ring is sundered. Frodo and Sam continue their journey alone down the great River Anduin _ alone that is, save for a mysterious creeping figure...
Brooklyn
Tóibín, Colm
Paper Book
Winner of the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Colm Tóibín's internationally bestselling novel is a story of devastating emotional power. At the centre of Colm Tóibín's internationally celebrated novel is Eilis Lacey, one among many of her generation who...
The nickel boys : a novel
Whitehead, Colson
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction Finalist for the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Awards Longlisted for the 2019...

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