From the author of the beloved New York Times best-selling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and the creator and star of The Mindy Project comes a collection of essays that are as hilarious and insightful as they are deeply personal.
In Why Not Me? Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or, most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you.
In “How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet’s Confessions”, Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty (“Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate – this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman’s traditional hair color is honey blonde”). “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in LA (“I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs”). In “Unlikely Leading Lady”, she muses on America’s fixation with the weight of actresses (“Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they’re walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture”). And in “Soup Snakes”, Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend B. J. Novak (“I will freely admit: my relationship with B. J. Novak is weird as hell”).
Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming of age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.
Starts slow….then get’s rolling I have to be upfront; I didn’t read the other Mindy Kaling book, so I can’t compare this one to the previous one; so, I just have to talk about this one in its own merits. It’s a good read and worth sometime, the format makes it possible to gloss over some areas that might not interest the reader.Â
First book was FARRR BETTER Eh. I like Mindy Kaing. Her first book was side-splittingly funny and I think she deserves every ounce of success she gets. That said, this book is not as good as the first one. It feels very forced, and pretty random. It feels like she was pressured to write a second book, and this is the product. The jokes aren’t natural, as they were in the first book, and I found it rather boring and rambling. Very disappointed because I absolutely love the first book and her.
Why Not More Mindy? I bought this book for my Kindle immediately after it was released at midnight, and finished within 2 days. If I had the choice though, I would’ve went with the hardcopy version because there are tons of awesome photos in the book that doesn’t look too great on the black and white Kindle.Â