I love everything about Mindy Kaling. I love her writing/producing talent, her sense of humor, her Office character Kelly Kapoor, her always-entertaining Twitter account, and her inhumanly perfect skin and glossy hair, so it stands to reason I'm going to be a big fan of her book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).

(The hair/skin thing isn't really relevant to her talent, I just wanted to mention it because dude. WHAT BEAUTY PRODUCTS IS SHE USING I WILL SELL MY CHILDREN TO PURCHASE THEM.)

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? is a relatable-sounding memoir—no small feat, considering Mindy's life is most assuredly nothing like my own. But there's just Something About Kaling that makes her seem like everyone's best friend. So far, it seems everyone who's picked up the book has been enjoying her company, because her witty observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood are earning rave reviews. Check out some of the high praise the book is already receiving:

She’s like Tina Fey’s cool little sister. Or perhaps… the next Nora Ephron. —The New York Times

The fashion opinions of Kelly Kapoor mixed with a Miss Manners-esque advice column. —EW.com

If you love Kelly and think the three minutes or so allotted her on episodes of The Office are too few, you can take home Mindy. —The New Yorker

Kaling recently talked to the Wall Street Journal about the book, and I found her comments on finding the time to write it (it took a year and a half to finish) to be rather inspiring:

(…) on this show [The Office] there are 18 writers, so I felt like this is another outlet. There’s so much downtime when you’re an actor with lighting setups and stuff like that. It was just the perfect kind of job, in between—20 minutes here, an hour there—to just sit down and email myself ideas and observations. So that’s what I kind of did.

This sure makes me think twice about how I so often tell myself I don't have time to write anything of substance because I'm so busy with work deadlines. I tend to think of book-writing as being an immersive process that blocks out everything else, but it certainly doesn't have to be that way.

I also love what she had to say about feeling nervous now that it's finally published:

I’m more terrified about this than anything else. Unlike The Office, where both the blame and the credit could be spread over so many dozens of people, with this, if it’s bad or it’s good or if it’s a success or it’s not is all on me. But it’s pretty empowering, too. I feel like the people who make the most impact are the ones who take the biggest risks.

If Kaling hadn't already won me over with her general awesomeness, this little video she did for Us Weekly would totally send me to the bookstore:


Seriously, she is so cute. I just want to live next door to her so we could hang out every single day and paint each other's nails and get frozen yogurt together, is that so wrong?

Are you a Mindy Kaling fan? Will you be reading Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? 

Image via Amazon