Two days ago, Michelle Obama announced that Argo was getting the Oscar for Best Picture of 2012. It also won Best Adapted Screenplay for the year, which means it was one of the many award-winning films that owes its inception to a work that came before it. Of the nine Best Picture nominees this year, three were based on novels (Les Miserables, Life of Pi and Silver Linings Playbook), one was based on a stage play (Beasts of the Southern Wild) and two were based on non-fiction books (Lincoln and Argo).  Unsurprisingly, many of these titles currently have waitlists at the San Jose Public Library, but you can always place your own hold!

Argo also has the unique distinction of being an Oscar winner that also used a magazine article for its source material: The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans From Tehran, which appeared in Wired magazine in April 2007. The article is freely available online.

The Academy Awards are just around the corner (February 24 to be exact). As the date approaches, have you been trying to remember which film won best picture last year? Are you interested in learning about the history of the Academy Awards? When it all started? Which film won the very first Best Picture award? The library has some great books that can answer these questions and more. Here are just a few of the titles on Oscar history that you can find at the San Jose Public Library:

• All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards by Emanuel Levy
• Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards by Mason Wiley and Damien Bona
• 75 years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards by Robert Osborne

With the rise in cost of private media subscriptions remember that you can still check out DVD's at your local library for free. Feature films now have a lending period of 3 weeks at San José Public Library and you can borrow up to 10 titles.  We have a wide variety of items.  I enjoy the National Geographic documentaries that are available.  Here are some titles to keep an eye out for: A Traveler's Guide to the Planets and Monster Black Holes. Come in and browse our collections!