Book Review: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

by: Mindy Kaling

I would not recommend this book to anyone I know. Maybe if I had a female cousin in junior high or something. It's not even that this is too girly -- it's just not funny.

Kaling describes this book in the introduction as being written in a way that reflects how she thinks. "Sometimes it's an essay or story, and sometimes it's a pliest, which is a piece with a list-y quality, a term I've just made up." But in reality, her chapter entitled "Alternate Titles for This Book" really nailed it with The Book That Was Never a Blog.

This book is really just a bunch of little blog posts pasted together and sold under the guise of being by one of the young, up and coming writers of a hit TV show. Which would be fine, to a certain extent, as long as she dished out cool details about The Office since that's pretty much all she is known for. Yet that long-running NBC tentpole only garners 20 pages of her already slim (220 pages) book.

I read this book in two sittings, comfortably. Although, I hesitate to say comfortably because there was close to no enjoyment until the second to last chapter. It was titled "A Eulogy for Mindy Kaling" and it was some of the funniest writing in the book. Not by Kaling, of course, but by Michael Schur, a former writer for The Office and co-creator of Parks and Recreation. If he put out a book I would grab it in a heartbeat.