Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns)

Author:  Mindy Kaling

Year: 2011

Publisher:  Random House Audio

Narrator:  Mindy Kaling

Goodreads Description:

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.

Going into this audiobook, I knew next to nothing about Mindy Kaling. However, over the past couple of years I've heard a lot of people bragging on this book and how funny it was and how much they enjoyed it. And they were right. She is hilarious. She's also super normal. I felt like we would be friends if we knew each other. I also felt like there were parts of the books that would have been funnier if I knew something about Mindy Kaling or about comedy in general. I don't watch SNL or The Office or comedy shows or movies. I did laugh. I found myself agreeing with her and thinking that this girl knows what being a normal girl is all about.