Why Not Me?

by Mindy Kaling

Overview

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and creator of The Mindy Project and Never Have I Ever comes a hilarious collection of essays about her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life.

“This is Kaling at the height of her power.”—USA Today

In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares insightful, deeply personal stories about 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, and 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 “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. (“I had been replaced by a younger model.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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804138161
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/27/2016
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	47,522
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Mindy Kaling is an actor, writer, producer, and director. She currently writes and produces the Netflix original series Never Have I Ever, based on her own childhood. She also wrote, executive produced, and starred in the comedy series  The Mindy Project. Before The Mindy Project, Mindy was best known for her work on the critically acclaimed, Emmy Award–winning NBC show The Office. In addition to directing, producing, and portraying celebrity-obsessed Kelly Kapoor, Mindy wrote eighteen episodes of the series, including the Emmy-nominated episode “Niagara.” Mindy was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2012. In 2014, she was named one of Glamour’s women of the year.

Read an Excerpt

One evening last year, I was onstage at a Q&A in Manhattan hosted by a magazine to discuss my life and career. This was one of those fancy events where ticket prices are high, and there’s wine and cheese beforehand, and cocktails, but no real meal is served at any point. It made you wish you had just shushed the naysayers and brought three hot little sliders in your clutch to nibble at opportune moments. No one else seemed to mind the lack of food, though, because the theater was packed, primarily with an older, mostly white crowd.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Why Not Me?"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Mindy Kaling.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Hello Again 1

For the Ladies 7

How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet's Confessions 8

Some Thoughts on Weddings 23

Mindy Kaling, Sorority Girl 28

(Minor) Fame Has Changed Me 41

Things to Bring to My Dinner Party 49

Player 52

Take This Job and Love It 65

How to Get Your Own TV Show (and Nearly Die of Anxiety) 67

Mindy Lahiri, MD, Everygirl, Mild Sociopath 84

On Being a Mentor, by Greg Daniels 86

I Love Sex Scenes! 90

Coming This Fall 96

A Day in the Life of Mindy Kaling 101

Bad Sport 115

Love, Dating, and Boys who Ru(i)n the World 121

Soup Snakes 123

One of the President's Men 133

A Perfectly Reasonable Request 155

A Perfect Courtship in My Alternate Life 158

All the Opinions You Will Ever Need 189

Unlikely Leading Lady 191

Harvard Law School Glass Day Speech 203

4 a.m. Worries 212

Why Not Me? 215

Acknowledgments 225

Photography Credits 227

Editorial Reviews

Kaling has written a second book that’s funnier, sharper and more confident than her 2011 collection of personal essays and pop culture riffs called Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).  Even the title of that initial effort implied that Kaling was trying to find her place; the tone of this new one announces that she’s found it and is more than comfortable inviting people to spend time with her there.”—Washington Post

“Funny, thoughtful essays and anecdotes written in the star’s trademark voice. But this time around, things are just little more grown-up…This is Kaling at the height of her power.”—USA Today

 “Mindy Kaling may be gearing up for the fourth season of her TV show, The Mindy Project, but that didn't deter her from writing another wildly entertaining and completely relatable book… Her first memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), spent time on several best-seller lists. Why Not Me? will certainly follow in its footsteps.”—Associated Press

“Hilarious…Kaling knows her strengths, and plays to them brilliantly…Aside from that effortlessly conversational tone and her pitch-perfect humor, Kaling’s biggest strength here is curatorial. She gives us the candy we came for—the advice, the anecdotes, the straight talk on body image—but sprinkles in something extra.”—Entertainment Weekly, A-

“Why Not Me? is all that we've come to expect from the creator and star of The Mindy Project: refreshing, confident, genuine, and, yes, absolutely hilarious.” —Refinery29 

“…insightful personal essays from one of Hollywood's cleverest writers… Intrepid and often irreverent, Kaling humbly probes her own triumphs and defeats with laugh-out-loud results”. —Kirkus Reviews

“Kaling's irreverent take on life is both uproariously funny and dead-on…Advice on a variety of topics—including why extensions make everyone more beautiful and how the world needs to start assuming that all young women are confident—make this an empowering and entertaining read.”—Publishers Weekly
 

From the Publisher

10/12/2015
In her second collection of personal essays, actor and comedy writer Kaling (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)) offers readers a refreshing glimpse of her life of "(minor) fame" and the work that she did to get there. Hilariously titled essays are interspersed with candid photos of the star. Kaling's irreverent take on life is both uproariously funny and dead-on. The book is chock full of cultural commentary, from the rise of "small-plates restaurants" in Los Angeles to why stars pretend not to like sex scenes; Kaling skillfully blends highbrow with low in her trademark witty voice. While narrating personal episodes, such as when she met President Obama for the first time and almost fainted at his praise, Kaling skirts larger issues like her mother's death or her "weird" relationship with actor B.J. Novak. At times her self-deprecating tone suggests that the Ivy League graduate is fluff-headed, which, based on the contents of this book as well as her meteoric career, is obviously not true. Advice on a variety of topics—including why extensions make everyone more beautiful and how the world needs to start assuming that all young women are confident—make this an empowering and entertaining read. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

2015-09-19
Light yet insightful personal essays from one of Hollywood's cleverest writers. Kaling (Is Everyone Hanging Out with Me?, 2011) dishes up another collection of humorous first-person essays on topics ranging from exposés borne of her insider's view on TV stardom—"Sex scenes are the tits"—to an inspirational speech she gave at Harvard Law School. Photographs interspersed throughout the book help underscore the author's kindly self-deprecating sense of humor and demonstrate her points about the stages of her typical 17-hour workday ("A Day in the Life of Mindy Kaling") or the value of having a flotilla of stylists prepare you for a photo shoot ("How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet's Confessions"). Fans of The Office and The Mindy Project will relish Kaling's snapshots from the writers' room and no-holds-barred depiction of the breakneck pace at which this writer/show-running actor lives while at work on her series. Readers less familiar with Kaling's TV exploits will also find interesting food for thought in more extended pieces examining friendship and varying levels of intimacy. Though the collection might easily be relegated to the shelves of chick-lit memoir for its bald appeal to young women or "a gay man getting a present for your even gayer friend," Kaling's reflections on her own self-image reveal an admirable depth of introspection. Particularly motivational is the volume's closing piece, in which the author calls out undeserved confidence: "Confidence is just entitlement...simply the belief that you deserve something. Which is great. The hard part is, you'd better make sure you deserve it." Having had to continually face the gauntlet of questions of what it's like enduring her Hollywood "otherness" due to her Indian origin, curvaceous figure, and willingness to speak the truth, Kaling espouses her hard-won mantra: "If you've got it, flaunt it. And if you don't got it? Flaunt it. 'Cause what are we even doing here if we're not flaunting it?" Intrepid and often irreverent, Kaling humbly probes her own triumphs and defeats with laugh-out-loud results.

Kirkus Reviews

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