Off the Shelf, September 2026

In a recent Zoom meet up with Bonny and Kym, we decided to start a new monthly series of blog posts called Off the Shelf. Essentially, we will be taking turns (with no set schedule so those turns may all happen on the same Monday and that’s okay) highlighting a book that is on our personal book shelf. Today I want to talk about this one:

It’s one of the few textbooks from college that I remember vividly and it was from the course Art History, which I took my junior year, spanning both the fall and spring semesters. This class was hard. It met twice a week for 90 minutes each time. One class was always just slides, the other was a lecture and discussion on the slides we had been shown. It involved a lot of memorization and was so different from my English literature and history classes. And I adored it. I learned so much and my world view expanded and it was the first time I ever heard of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

I was awestruck by this beautiful dome that seems to float in mid air. Overwhelmed by it’s beauty and enthralled by the vivid colors, I said to myself . . . you’re going to see that in person some day.

And that day is coming in just one week.

Next Sunday night, my friend Jo-Ann and I are boarding a plane bound for Turkey. We will spend two days in Istanbul, visiting my long anticipated Hagia Sophia, as well as some other main attractions. From there we will fly to Athens to attend the wedding of Doreen’s son.

It’s taken 40 years for this dream to come true. And this Off the Shelf post seemed like the perfect time to tell you about it.