You Know Me As Lad

Let me explain the title of this review because I know it seems insulting that I was shocked. This is Mindy Kaling. She's so amazing on screen. How could I doubt her? Sacrilige. Once again, let me explain because this is not only going to be a review of this book. It will also be a bit of a story on my history with memoirs.

I have not been able to finish a memoir in years. The book by the creator of Hyperbole and a Half is the exception and I'm convinced I only finished her book because it was half pictures. When I was in my early twenties I read more than a few memoirs but they were all really serious. The ones that stand out are one by a woman with an eating disorder which resonated with me, a couple of Michelle Tea memoirs that were interesting because they were so unlike my life experiences, Prozac Nation which I hated and think is overrated, and Smash which was so bad I only made it to the half way mark. Then I read a lot of almost memoirs by Charles Bukowski that I LOVED, and all three Dan Fante books that were out at the time because I'd run out of Charles Bukowski material. I loved Dan Fante's work as well. I know, I know most of you are probably crying out in outrage "They are misogynists!". You know what? Their writing is also really freaking honest and I like that, so hush.

After that period of being a total book snob, reading Atwood, Bukowski, Tea, Brecht, Huxley, and my favorite, Mark Z. Danielewski, I found ebooks and romance and got into M/M romance almost exclusively. In the past year I've almost given up on romance and gotten back into non-fiction but each memoir I've started has gone bust and I've DNF'd a few. They were all pretty disappointing.

When I decided I wanted to read Mindy Kaling's book I went in with really low expectations. Kaling's book exceeded them. I loved it from word one. Kaling writes in a very conversational tone but I didn't find her work to be sprawling or disjointed. So, even though I felt like she was sitting next to me, telling me a story, it was a story that I knew had a point and I enjoyed the journey. Mindy Kaling is also hella funny. She's not always laugh out loud funny but I don't think she's trying to be. Her type of funny is not a sprint, it's a marathon. She's entertaining and she makes the most mundane things seem like really great anecdote fodder. This is most apparent at the end of the book when one of her writer friends writes her a eulogy. His type of humor was definitely a sprint looking for big laughs. It's my least favorite part of the book because it tries too hard.

Actually, what I was expecting when I started Kaling's book was a writer who was trying to hard to get big, boisterous laughs. Instead I got really sincere takes on a very funny woman's life experiences. Kaling's book was an excellent surprise.