Book: 5 Minutes Ago

Title: 5 Minutes Ago
Author: Hilary de Vries
Thoughts: Hmm. Not too long ago, my husband and I had a long conversation about the name-dropping of real things/places/people in fiction. He hates it completely and utterly. I dislike it, but can see how, especially in chick lit, it is acceptable. A woman wearing head-to-toe Gucci or Armani means something more than a woman dressed in a nice suit. Those names stand for something, and basically act as a placeholder. If the reader is told a woman wears Armani, you know she is rich, you know she's classy, you suspect she might be pretentious... etc, etc. That said, I hate sentences like this "The woman, dressed head-to-toe in Gucci, strode into the Starbucks on the corner of Bleeker and 4th, ordered her standard venti quad espresso, pulled a twenty from her Louis Vuitton handbag and waved at Charlize Theron, who happened to be picking up her grande non-fat, half-caf mocha." Too much!! TOO MUCH!! And, for me, 5 Minutes Ago was simply too much. Too much name dropping, too many almost-libelous references to real celebrities, too much.

And not just because I'm writing my own Hollywood-kinda-sucks-doesn't-it novel ;)