Review: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Title: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Author: Mindy Kaling
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Year published: 2011
How I got this book: Listened to it as an audiobook on the app Storytel
My rating: 4 stars

Goodreads synopsis:
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, 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.

My thoughts:
This book is funny. This book makes you think. This book opens your eyes. 

I listened to the audiobook version of this book, read by Mindy Kaling herself, and absolutely loved it. I don't read many auto-biographies, but I always really like the ones I choose.

When listening to this, it feels like Mindy right there, telling you these stories about her life, and what she learned from them. It isn't too formal, it just feels like a friend talking about her life. Mindy Kaling is funny, and therefore, this book is funny as well. I had high hopes for this, as a lover of The Office (which she wrote for), and I was not disappointed.

Kaling mentions other comedians as well in this book, and how some of them helped her. She talks about Amy Poehler (whom I absolutely love, everyone should read her book Yes, Please!), and how she warmed to her when she started at Saturday Night Live.

I always find books like this inspiring, because it shows that if you really work hard for something, you can achieve it. Kaling worked hard to get where she is now, and she has definitely deserved it. 

This is a light-hearted book, but it still makes you think about what's important in life. A book I would recommend to a lot of people, even if they might not know who Mindy Kaling is. However, if you're  fan of hers, this is definitely something to pick up as soon as possible.

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