A Young Photographer Murdered by a Terrorist, the Death of the Perfect Writer and Bold Oscar Predictions

Our editors are a diverse lot and are constantly perusing a long and broad list of publications and sites. Fashion? Art? Architecture? Culinary studies? Semantics? In What We’re Reading, PaperCity shares the wealth.

Umberto Eco was a perfect writer. You most assuredly have heard of The Name of the Rose, a great book that was made into a fine film. But he was much more, and his death is a loss to the world of thought. As Alexander Lee writes about Eco in a piece in HistoryToday, “Although he was many things to many people over the course of his career — semiologist, anthropologist, literary critic, publisher, best-selling novelist — he was, first and foremost, an historian railing against modernism in all its forms.”

A young photographer died this January, the victim of a terrorist attack in Burkina Faso. She was but 33. Her name was Leila Alaoui, and she deserves to be remembered. You can do so by reading this.

Will you be watching the stars on Sunday evening? Perhaps hosting an Oscar party? You’ll probably be commenting on the dresses and wardrobe, so take a look at these standouts from previous Oscar evenings (they are stunning).

And finally, continuing in the Hollywood vein, here are one man’s predictions for the winners on Sunday night in the big show.