Dissecting a modern day woman’s brain – it’s just so fluffy!.
Genre: Memoir, Comedy
No. of pages: 222
From Goodreads:
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.
A pleasant light-hearted look at a woman’s point of view about everything – not to say that it offers advice or opinions, because it’s not. It’s simply a glance inside Mindy Kaling’s head… and it seemed a lot like mine in there.
Some parts were random lists or stories about things, which had me laughing my guts out. Simply because they were random. And funny. And how I too suddenly blurt out the most obtuse and inappropriate things. Mindy Kaling is me and a brave woman suit! Heck no, Mindy Kaling is my spirit animal.
I wouldn’t go so far to say this book in hilarious. I don’t think that was her goal in writing this book. Just like as a performer or comedian we’re not meant to be performing monkeys ‘on’ all the time just for your enjoyment. It was like sitting down on the lounge floor in you pj’s and having a gasbag with your girlfriends.
I love how the structure was broken up into flashbacks, lists, stories and comments on pictures… it really was like how evenings go with my girlfriends, clutching a glass of bubbly reminiscing and making each other cackle until we snort.
I did want it to be funnier though. Or more engaging. But I understand in doing so it would have either been too serious, or too silly. This that the right amount of everything to kick back and relax, and to just enjoy reading.
I appreciate how Mindy simply blurts out what’s on her mind. It’s finding a voice for much of my internal dialogue; and whether she intended the book to be like this or not, after reading it, I felt that if we were to run into each other at a party would become fast friends. And that is a great tone to have of a memoir. Masterfully done.
So many hot key topics discussed without being pretentious. I recommend this to anyone who loves memoirs, or just loves being a girl.
Overall feeling: Damn girl!
© Casey Carlisle 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Casey Carlisle 