Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

How a girl goes from a glasses-wearing dork to a writer for a beloved TV show
To the casual viewer, Mindy Kaling is the actress who plays Kelly Kapoor, the materialistic, vapid, occasionally psychopathic young employee at Dunder Mifflin on The Office. To many comedy fans, however, Kaling is a hero; one of the few non-white, non-male comedy writers to write and direct episodes of a long-running prime-time comedy. (And maintain an entertaining shopping blog, “Things I Bought That I Love,” at the same time.) Kaling has the same fun, girlfriendly personality traits as Kapoor but she’s both more intelligent and sweetly traditional than her television character. The pieces in her book that reflect those qualities are the strongest, particularly her revelation that she wants a marriage like her parents’, whose dynamic she likens to “pals.” Some sections are a little more lightweight than others (such as when Kaling discusses the exact level of fame she wants), but they’re not unpleasant. They just reveal less than when Kaling discusses the behind-the-scenes information about how a girl goes from a glasses-wearing dork to a writer for a beloved show who occasionally gets to play dress-up for People magazine. New and old fans of Kaling will feel close to the writer and may wish to Tweet her after certain passages of the book, to say “OMG me too!”