Book Sixteen

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and other concerns)
Mindy Kaling

Our book club has been struggling this summer, both with our reading and with our getting together to discuss what we're reading.  As a result, we're going to meet this week to discuss our June and August books.  We're skipping our July book, which was maybe a little depressing to add to a summer month.  Anyway, thankfully our August book is the Mindy Kaling autobiography.  Easy enough.

And fluffy.  And only mildly funny. 

I'll confess to being a bit disappointed.  I don't know really what I was expecting, except maybe some wipe the tears from my eyes laughter and hilarity.  I didn't get that.  The book is certainly light and easy to read.  It will be even easier to discuss, I'm sure.

Kaling is a good writer.  She turns a phrase nicely from time to time, and her descriptions of herself are candid.  I appreciate that she doesn't try to make herself more amazing than she already is (which is pretty amazing, if she does say so herself).  There are certainly moments when I laughed out loud.  Those came in her description of one-night stands, the "Irish" exit, and the pictures on her Blackberry. 

The subtitle of this book is perhaps the most descriptive title I've ever seen in a book.  Sometimes when I'm reading a book I will read almost the entire book before I understand where the title originated.  Other times it is only on reflection days later.  With this it was clear from the beginning--Kaling is simply sharing 200 or so pages of her concerns about growing up, friendships, work, boys and men, and fashion.  I'm not saying that's a bad thing.  I'm just saying that sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it isn't.  But all of it made me like her more and wish that we were friends.  My concerns are pretty random and only mildly funny too.

NOTE: She did have some great thoughts on marriage, which will undoubtedly make it into another blog post this week.