book review
Title: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Author: Mindy Kaling
# of Pages: 240
Summary (from amazon.com): Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck-impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”
Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!
In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door-not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.
Opinion: Similarly to Tina Fey's book, I really enjoyed this book not only because I loved Mindy Kaling in general, but because this book allowed me a look at her in a different way - the way she sees herself. I found her writing about herself and the evolution of her life from chubby, nerdy child to struggling writer in NYC, to successful Hollywood writer not only really endearing, but hitting kind of close to home. The portion of the book written about living/moving to NYC after college with her best friends to working that first "real" job resonated so well and found me just nodding my head and being like "My roommates and I do that EXACT same thing!". I think what I enjoyed the most about Kaling's book was her easy style and good humour about not only herself, but the business she's in that made her even more endearing in my mind.
Now Reading: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
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