What to Read Based on Your Favorite Best Picture Nominee

If you liked The Big Short, then read…Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin
There’s a certain level of gallows humor in stories about big banks and the financial crisis. The subject matter—the housing crisis and the subprime mortgages that caused it—in The Big Short is, by no means, amusing. Neither is the meat of Too Big to Fail, helpfully and thoroughly subtitled, “The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System From Crisis—and Themselves.” But some of the antics and behavior detailed in each lends an element of entertainment to even the most harrowing true-life machinations and calculations.

If you liked Bridge of Spies, then read…The Billion Dollar Spy, by David E. Hoffman
The quiet tension of the Cold War pervades Bridge of Spies, itself a testament to the often subtle subterfuge behind espionage—this stuff isn’t all James Bond chase scenes. It’s also the story of one man who simply refused to just do his job. Similarly, The Billion Dollar Spy recounts the personal risks undertaken by Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet engineer so disenchanted with his government’s corruption that he turned into a valuable CIA asset in Moscow.

If you liked Brooklyn, then read…How to Paint a Dead Man, by Sarah Hall
The emotional intimacy of Brooklyn is what packs a wallop. Eilis Lacey’s immigrant journey from Ireland to 1950s New York is filled with both fish-out-of-water challenges and tender moments of newfound happiness. And you feel every one alongside her. Though its setting is vastly different, How to Paint a Dead Man tells an equally emotive narrative, through the individual stories of four artists, connected in ways they themselves do not know. With two Italians and two Brits, spanning decades starting in the 1960s, we confront a stunning array of life’s many challenges, and its beauty. The result is a still life of sorts of four stories, and of four artists.

If you liked Mad Max: Fury Road, then read…Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
So you like tightly plotted dystopias with notes of genetic malfeasance? You’re in luck. In Oryx and Crake, Snowman may indeed be the last human on earth. As you might imagine, that’s a concept he’s having trouble grappling with. Surrounding him is a new breed of homo sapien, the Children of Crake, genetically engineered to be passive, docile, and physically flawless. As Snowman mourns his friend, Crake, and the woman they both loved, Oryx, we’re taken on a journey that explains how humanity got to this point. And it will keep you as engaged and breathless as Imperator Furiosa’s screen time.

If you liked The Martian, then read…Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Can’t get enough of the Red Planet? Take a trip to Mars that doesn’t require us rescuing Matt Damon for the eighth time. (Do you know what we could have done with that $900 billion, Matt?) In the Mars trilogy, Robinson transports us to the near future—2026—as a group of 100 colonists prepares to settle on Mars. They are prepared with a smattering of scientific antidotes to taming the planet’s harsh and volatile climate. Beyond its setting, Red Mars will appeal to Martian fans for its finely honed look into the human psyche: the terrain is not be the only thing their mission changes.

If you liked The Revenant, then read…The Terror, by Dan Simmons
If simmering misery is more your speed, then check out further adventures of wintry agony, this time awaiting the men aboard the aptly named HMS Terror, part of the first search for the Northwest Passage by steam-powered vessels. In 1845 (or really, today) two years in the Arctic Circle is no pleasure cruise. The men aboard Terror encounter as many challenges to survival as Leo: diminishing and dangerous food supplies, dwindling rations of coal, a ship ensconced in ice, epic levels of cabin fever. There is also an outside enemy, bear-like and mysterious, yet deadly all the same.

If you liked Room, then read…Before I Go to Sleep, by S. J. Watson
In Room, a physical gatekeeper holds Ma and Jack captive. Watson crafts something potentially more horrifying: when your mind is what holds you prisoner. What is life when you can’t trust your memory? That’s what Christine confronts every day. Every time she goes to sleep, she loses her long-term memories. Each morning she wakes, not realizing she’s middle-aged, or married, and not realizing she relives this same nightmare continually. All she has to rely on day-to-day is her husband, the one person she must trust and perhaps the one person she trusts the least.

If you liked Spotlight, then read…The Night of the Gun, by David Carr
If Spotlight triggered your enthusiasm for great feats of journalism, and the ink-stained wretches who make them possible, I direct your attention to this memoir of sorts from the late New York Times columnist. Carr weaves the tale of his own struggles with drug addiction, but instead of simply recounting them, he uses his finely honed news-gathering skills to report his own story. Alternatively, if you’re looking for narratives of investigative journalism, pick up the O.G. of muckraking: The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.