Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

Bren and I befriended each other early on, became inseparable through a shared sense of humor, a trove of nonsensical private jokes, and had the same enemies within the Drama Department. We clung to each other with blind loyalty, like Lord Voldemort and his snake, Nagini. I, of course, was Nagini. If you messed with one of us, you knew you messed with both of us, and Voldemort was going to cast a murder spell on you, or Nagini was going to chomp on your jugular. It was such a good, dramatic time.

-Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? 

Oh, dear. I am disastrously, disastrously behind here. Things have been fun & busy here in real life, which has left me with slightly less time to ruminate about books. Still, I hate to abandon things, so I'll try to scrape together some--probably abbreviated--posts.

I wanted to come up with some cute intro for Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, something to explain how much I like Mindy Kaling or how much I'd been looking forward to reading her book. Unfortunately, all I seem to be able to come up with are cliches and anecdotes about cupcakes, which I'm going to skip in the interest in keeping things moving.

I read this book quite quickly--I think I read the first chapter before going to bed one night, then finished the rest the next day. It's light and (unsurprisingly) funny, the tone conversational and very engaging. Kaling writes about her childhood, her college life, and her struggle to make it in New York post-graduation. She has the killer combination of being both extremely funny and extremely dedicated, so (spoiler alert!) even given the difficulty of the industry, it's easy to see why she's been as successful as she has. If she didn't seem so awesome, I'd have to be a little jealous. Instead I'll just content myself by enjoying her Twitter feed and looking forward to her new fall pilot. I could definitely see rereading this one in the future, especially if I were in need of a pick-me-up.

Up next: Got on a little comedy kick and went with Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America.