A literary guide to the Golden Globes

By Michael Schaub

Dec. 12, 2016 10:45 AM PT

The nominees for the 2017 Golden Globe Awards were announced Monday morning, and although the focus is on achievements in television and film, there’s no reason for book lovers to feel left out.

Many of this year’s nominated movies and shows were based on books. So if you’re more at home in a library or a bookstore than a movie theater, you’re likely to find some reading material to curl up with while the rest of your family is gathered around the television set.

“Arrival” (actress in a motion picture, drama): Amy Adams plays a linguist, mourning the death of her young daughter, who helps the U.S. Army translate symbols used by aliens who have suddenly come to Earth. The movie is an adaptation of “Story of Your Life,” the Nebula Award-winning novella by author Ted Chiang.

“Elle” (motion picture, foreign language; actress in a motion picture, drama): Armenian French author Philippe Djian won the Prix Interallié literary prize for his novel “Oh...”, which forms the basis for this Paul Verhoeven-directed thriller about a woman who stalks the man who raped her. Isabelle Huppert stars.

“Fences” (actor in a motion picture, drama; supporting actress in any motion picture): Denzel Washington directed, adapted and stars in this adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, costarring Viola Davis, about a Pittsburgh trash collector still bitter about his failure to make it as a baseball player.

“Game of Thrones” (television series, drama; supporting actress in a series, limited series or motion picture made for television): The blockbuster HBO series inspired by George R.R.Martin’s series of lengthy novels “A Song of Ice and Fire” earned a supporting actress nod for Lena Headey. If you’re looking for holiday reading, you might want to take some time off work: there are more than 4,300 pages in the series, and the final two books haven’t even been published yet.

“Hidden Figures” (supporting actress in any motion picture): Octavia Spencer plays Dorothy Vaughan, an African American mathematician who worked as a “human computer” for NASA, crunching the numbers that made space travel possible. The film is based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s history “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race,” released in September.

“Lion” (motion picture, drama; supporting actor in any motion picture; supporting actress in any motion picture; original score, motion picture): Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman costar in the film based on the true story of a man who was adopted by an Australian family after he was lost as a 5-year-old in India and who uses Google Earth to search for his birth parents. The movie was based on Saroo Brierley’s memoir “A Long Way Home: A Boy’s Incredible Journey From India to Australia and Back Again.”

“Mozart in the Jungle” (television series, musical or comedy; Gael García Bernal, actor in a television series, musical or comedy): The Amazon comedy-drama about classical musicians living in New York draws its inspiration from oboist Blair Tindall’s 2005 memoir “Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music.”

“My Life as a Zucchini” (motion picture, animated): The Swiss animated film has drawn rave reviews from critics who praised the movie’s story of a young boy who’s forced to live in a foster home for children after his mother dies. It’s based on “Autobiographie D’une Courgette,” a 2002 novel by French journalist Gilles Paris.

“The Night Manager” (television limited series or motion picture made for television; actor in a limited series or motion picture made for television; supporting actress in a series, limited series or motion picture made for television; supporting actor in a series, limited series or motion picture made for television): The BBC miniseries, broadcast in America on AMC is based on “The Night Manager,” John le Carré’s 1993 novel about a hotel manager recruited to be a British spy and stars Tom Hiddleston, Olivia Colman and Hugh Laurie.

“Nocturnal Animals” (supporting actor in any motion picture; director, motion picture; screenplay, motion picture): The 1993 cult classic novel “Tony and Susan” inspired the latest from director Tom Ford, who also wrote the screenplay for the thriller about a woman who receives a manuscript from her ex-husband, a would-be novelist with a dark side. Aaron Taylor Johnson gets the supporting actor nod.

Outlander (actress in a television series, drama): Fans of the television series about a mid-20th century nurse who travels back in time to 18th century Scotland, which stars Caitriona Balfe, will probably love the books the series is based on: eight novels by American author Diana Gabaldon, the most recent of which is “Written in My Own Heart’s Blood.”

“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” (television limited series or motion picture made for television; actress in a limited series or motion picture made for television; actor in a limited series or motion picture made for television; supporting actor in a series, limited series or motion picture made for television): The Emmy-award winning series is based on Jeffrey Toobin’s 1997 book “The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” about the televised trial of O.J. Simpson for the 1994 murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The series stars Sarah Paulson, Courtney B. Vance and Sterling K. Brown.

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