It's really nice to be rounding out a year of 5 Heart Ratings with such a nice experience. I'd heard about The Dotted Lime from a friend who has lived in Columbia, Tennessee, where the restaurant is located, her entire life. It's a bit of a drive for me so I've put it off for a while and finally got around to checking it out. Boy am I glad I did! GPS took me on a bit of a detour before I found the restaurant in a nondescript locale in the center of a strip mall. The building itself has a Read more [...]

Michael Scott Moore was held captive by Somali pirates for 977 days. Let me repeat that: He was held captive for 977 days by pirates! The story itself makes it a best-seller but it's the telling of the story that makes it what I would consider an absolute masterpiece. I am going to cheat here by quoting a review I found on Amazon. I listened to the book in Mr. Moore's own voice on Audible, but this reviewer pretty much sums up how I feel about this amazing book. I will go a bit further to Read more [...]

Leave it to the Brits to create a movie that genuinely gave me a two-hour break from reality. I knew nothing about the premise of the movie and you may want to stop reading now if you don't want to either. But I did watch the entire series and will likely watch it again. The way the movie starts with a very clever, very British synopsis of the entire series is absolutely brilliant! And it just gets better from there. The entire original cast from the series is in the movie. And the banter Read more [...]

It's rare that I find a movie to be as good as a book. But in the case of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, I found an exception. The best-selling novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, in audio form, is extremely well-written, beautifully narrated by Paul Boehmer, Susan Duerden, Rosalyn Landor, John Lee, and Juliet Mills, and is just all-around entertaining. So I was a tad reluctant to even give the movie a chance. Boy am I glad I did! Though a fictional Read more [...]

On a recent flight I had the pleasure of seeing a great movie, The Mustang, by director  Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. This is a great movie starring Matthias Schoenaerts. It's available now for rent on Amazon Video. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2a-KSOCIeY Read more [...]