The Kindle Reads Books That Inspired Oscar-Nominated Films

Among the films nominated for academy awards in major categories this year are four based on novels now available in Kindle editions:

Revolutionary Roadby Richard Yates. Vintage. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (131 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99. Nominated for best supporting actor (Michael Shannon), best art direction and best costume design.

From the moment of its publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs. It's the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

Q & Aby Vikas Swarup. Scribner. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (29 reviews). Kindle edition $8.99. Slumdog Millionaire, based on Vikas Swarup's novel, garnered 10 nominations including for best picture, best director (Danny Boyle), best original score and best adapted screenplay.

"Vikas Swarup's spectacular debut novel opens in a jail cell in Mumbai, India, where Ram Mohammad Thomas is being held after correctly answering all twelve questions on India's biggest quiz show, Who Will Win a Billion? It is hard to believe that a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school could win such a contest. But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer how episodes in his life gave him the answer to each question. Ram takes us on an amazing review of his own history -- from the day he was found as a baby in the clothes donation box of a Delhi church to his employment by a faded Bollywood star to his adventure with a security-crazed Australian army colonel to his career as an overly creative tour guide at the Taj Mahal...a beguiling blend of high comedy, drama, and romance that reveals how we know what we know -- not just about trivia, but about life itself." - Amazon.

The Readerby Bernhard Schlink. Vintage. Translated from the German. Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (796 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99. 5 nominations including best picture, best director (Stephen Daldry), and best actress (Kate Winslet).

"...a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?" - Amazon.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttonby F. Scott Fitzgerald. Amazon Digital Services. Kindle edition $0.80. Also available for free download from Feedbooks. 13 nominations, including best picture, best director (David Fincher), best actor (Brad Pitt), best supporting actress (Taraji P. Henson) and best adapted screenplay.

"Benjamin Button is born with the body of a seventy-year-old man, and when his father first visits him mere hours after his birth he is already able to speak. He is born aging backwards (he was an old man as a baby and vice versa), causing several complications. This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain’s to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end." - Amazon.