Reading Room

Even if it’s true that this photo of the University of Canterbury library shelves tumbled like dominos was by far the worst of the library damage, it’s an image that has stuck in my head these past weeks. Imagine -- as with so much else about the quake -- if it had happened in daylight, on a working day! How many students would have been flattened like so many pressed flowers in a Victorian album? OK, probably not many. But -- if it’s permissible to indulge in black humour at this stage -- they would have been the diligent ones,…