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 illustrated : narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and rescued in 1853 from a cotton plantation in Avoyelles Parish, in the Mississippi Valley of Louisiana
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
Room : a novel
Donoghue, Emma
Paper Book
Held captive for years in a small shed, a woman and her precocious young son finally gain their freedom, and the boy experiences the outside world for the first time. To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and...
The curious case of Benjamin Button and other tales of the jazz age
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Ebook
Extremely loud & incredibly close
Foer, Jonathan Safran
Paper Book
ANew York Times Bestseller * NamedA Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post Book World, Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,andRocky Mountain News   Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an...
Underwater wild : my octopus teacher's extraordinary world
Foster, Craig (Filmmaker)
Paper Book
From the creators of the Academy Award-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, an immersive journey into the underwater world that inspired it--and holds transformative lessons for us all Craig Foster and Ross Frylinck regularly dive together in the awe...

577.78 Foster 2021

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

Alan Turing : the enigma : the book that inspired the film The Imitation Game
Hodges, Andrew.
Ebook
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912...

510.92 T846yh 2014

Les miserables
Hugo, Victor
Paper Book
Now a major musical film from Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway, and also featuring Amanda Seyfreid, Helena Bonham-Carter and Sacha Baron-Cohen, Victor Hugo's Les Miserablesis one of the great works of western...
Hidden figures : the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race
Lee Shetterly, Margot.
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times bestseller -WINNER OF ANISFIELD-WOLF AWARD FOR NONFICTION -WINNER BLACK CAUCUS OF AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION BEST NONFICTION BOOK -WINNER NAACP IMAGE AWARD BEST NONFICTION BOOK -WINNER NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES,...

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.
Audiobook
The King's Speech was written by London Sunday Times journalist Peter Conradi and Mark Logue-grandson of Lionel Logue, whose recently discovered diaries and correspondence contain fascinating details about these true events. At the urging of his wife, Elizabeth, the Duke of York (known to the royal...

941.084 L829yL 2010

Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the west : a novel
Maguire, Gregory.
Paper Book
This is the book that started it all! The basis for the smash hit Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Gregory Maguire's breathtaking New York Times bestseller Wicked views the land of Oz, its inhabitants, its Wizard, and the Emerald City, through a darker and greener (not rosier) lens....
Life of Pi : a novel
Martel, Yann.
Paper Book
NOW ON BROADWAY The international bestseller and modern classic of adventure, survival, and the power of storytelling is now an award-winning play.  After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the...
Atonement : a novel
McEwan, Ian.
Paper Book
On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her older sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching Cecilia is their housekeeper’s son Robbie Turner, a childhood friend who, along with Briony&...
War horse
Morpurgo, Michael.
Audiobook
A beautiful mind : a biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, 1994
Nasar, Sylvia.
Audiobook
In this powerful and dramatic biography Sylvia Nasar vividly recreates the life of a mathematical genius whose career was cut short by schizophrenia and who, after three decades of devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel Prize. "How could you, a...
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
True grit
Portis, Charles.
Paper Book
A #1 New York Times bestseller, Charles Portis's True Grit is "an epic and a legend" (Washington Post), a story of danger and adventure in the Old West--the basis for two award-winning films, the first starring John Wayne in his only Oscar-winning role, as...
The revenant
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."--...
Push : a novel
Sapphire
Paper Book
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE Includes a Reading Group Guide Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem's...
The reader
Schlink, Bernhard.
Paper Book
Already an acclaimed & best-selling work of fiction in Europe (currently being translated into fourteen different languages worldwide), The Reader is both a literary surprise & a moral challenge: a riveting, provocative, & deeply moving novel about a young boy's erotic awakening in a passionate,...
Black Klansman : race, hate, and the undercover investigation of a lifetime
Stallworth, Ron
Ebook
The #1 New York Times Bestseller! The extraordinary true story and basis for the Academy Award winning film BlacKkKlansman, written and directed by Spike Lee, produced by Jordan Peele, and starring John David Washington and Adam Driver. When detective...

322.42 Stallworth 2018

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
The internationally bestselling novel based on real events. Now a major motion picture from writer/director Sarah Polley, starring Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand. "This amazing, sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real...
The fellowship of the ring : being the first part of The lord of the rings
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Paper Book
The Fellowship of the Ring is the first volume in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic adventure tale, The Lord of the Rings. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven...
The return of the king : being the third part of The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Paper Book
The awesome conclusion to The Lord of the Rings--the greatest fantasy epic of all time--which began in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read ...
The two towers : being the second part of the lord of the rings
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Paper Book
The Lord of the Rings saga continues in The Two Towers, the second volume in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic adventure. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Frodo and his Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger...
Brooklyn : A Novel
Tóibín, Colm
Paper Book
From the award-winning author of The Master, a hauntingly compelling novel--by far Tóibín's most accessible book--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...
The nickel boys : a novel
Whitehead, Colson
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * This follow-up to The Underground Railroad brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. * "One of the most gifted novelists in...

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