Book Review: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I wanted to start my 2018 reading journey with a light, funny book. And for the same, I reserved Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? From the few interviews that I have watched/read, she appears to be a funny, relatable, and likeable person. So her memoir seemed to be the ideal choice as my first book of the New Year.

But unfortunately, it turned out to be a disappointing read.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? is divided into 7 sections:

1)       Hello

2)      I Forget Nothing : A Sensitive Kid Looks Back

3)      I Love New York And It Likes Me Okay

4)      Hollywood : My Good Friend Who Is Also A little Embarrassing

5)      The Best Distraction In The World : Romance And Guys

6)      My Appearance : The Fun And The Really Not Fun

7)      My All-Important Legacy

Each section has about 2 to 10 chapters that talk about her childhood, bullies, life before becoming a famous writer/actor, life after becoming a famous writer/actor, her famous friends, romance, body image and her take on the Hollywood comedy scene. The language used is simple and easy to understand. The tone is conversational and friendly.

But the structure wasn’t cohesive. The chapters were so random. I would love to know how she narrowed down on the chapters of her life that she wanted to include in this book and what was the objective. For instance, she has an entire chapter dedicated to ‘Why do men put on their shoes so slowly?’ Why??!!

I felt cheated as a reader after reading few pointless chapters that were in the form of listicles like ‘Jewish Guys’, ‘These are the narcissistic photos in my Blackberry’, ‘Franchises I would like to reboot’, ‘My favourite eleven moments in Comedy’ and many more. It felt like reading click-bait Buzzfeed articles (listicles) written by Mindy Kaling, which should have been made available for free but I had to pay for it.

I had heard such great things about this book. How people couldn’t stop laughing while reading it. And how Mindy’s book is one of the funniest celebrity memoirs they have read. And that she is cute, hilarious, goofy, etc. etc. Therefore, it baffled me when I didn’t find it funny at all.

Not to say that there weren’t few interesting chapters. Like it was interesting to read about her play Matt & Ben, which is based on actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, co-written with her friend Brenda Withers.

To be honest, I suffered through this book and just wanted to get done with it as soon as possible, so I kept reading. What didn’t help either is that I could hear her high-pitch nasal voice!

That’s why I give this book only 1 star out of 5.

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Title : Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? 
Author : Mindy Kaling
Publication: 2011
Language : English
Pages : 222
Rating : 1/5