Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling
Publisher: Random House
Genre: Contemporary, Non-Fiction, Humor
Length: Full Length (219 pages)
Rating: 4.5 stars
Reviewed by NymphaeaMindy 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.
She might not be the literal girl-next-door, but honestly, does that matter? She’s a riot and I swear, I’d love to have her as my best friend.
Who am I talking about? Mindy Kaling. You might have seen her on The Office or The Mindy Project. I’d never seen either show, but I’d seen her in interviews and thought, this girl is funny as heck. So when I saw this book, I knew I wanted to read it.
A word of caution – she writes the book in a series of essays that she claims are not blog posts. In this day and age of things being written in short burst – like blog posts – it works. The writing is clean and conversational, like I was in the room with her and having the conversation. I laughed, cried and felt for her along the way.
This is a glimpse into Mindy Kaling’s world. The ups, the downs and how she got to where she is in life and it was fun to read. I loved her interpretations of college, getting a job and dealing with kids. She’s frank and unapologetic. My favorite part was her writing the plan for her own funeral.
If you want a book that’s a quick read, will pick you up and make you laugh, then this might be the book for you. It was for me.