Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - Mindy Kaling

I love Mindy Kaling. One of my favorite parts about listening to the Office Ladies Pod is hearing which Office episodes I wrote were written by Mindy. She's witty and smart and her jokes just land. So I was very excited to find this book on our office book swap shelves. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me is a collection of essays, written in between the hey day of The Office and the start of The Mindy Project when Mindy went from a fan favorite character on a popular sitcom to the lead of her own vehicle.

I never watched the Mindy Project because I don't really watch TV and I don't have Hulu, but I did see her latest movie Late Night, which I loved. The writing in it was so reminiscent of some of the best Office episodes she's credited for. So I guess I am surprised I didn't fall out of my seat in love with this book. But while each little story was funny on its own, I didn't devour it as a whole.

I liked learning about her background and I'm real bummed that I didn't even know Matt & Ben was a thing until listening to the Office Ladies Pod. So if anyone is doing a revival of that after we all stop hiding in our homes, hit me up because I'd like to see it. That she was an awkward, pudgy youth is not really a surprise. People who grow up golden don't typically tend to have a sense of humor.

So I'm glad I read this. And I love Mindy. I'll definitely read Why Not Me?, her second book, whether I find it for free at the office or not.

3.5/5 Stars 

Love and Ruin - Paula McLain

When I read The Paris Wife, I was living in Evanston, IL and had been obsessed with Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises for some time. It was the first book I examined critically. My junior year term paper was all Lady Brett all the time. My husband and I both listened to Farewell to Arms while training for the 2010 Toronto Marathon. I have read or re-read basically everything else Hemmingway. So I was ready for The Paris Wife and I really liked McLain's voice in telling Hadley Hemmingway's story. I may have actually named by own Chicago-born daughter after Hadley. 

So I was nervous that maybe lightening wouldn't strike the Hemmingway brides twice in Love and Ruin. But thankfully, I was wrong. I really enjoyed McLain's portrayal of Marty Gellhorn. She reminded me a lot of Beryl Markham in McLain's Circling the Sun (you can read my review of CTS here). Marty, like Beryl, chafed at conventional expectations of womanhood. They both excelled in male-dominated fields. They both wanted adventure and career and to felt seen. These are all very modern aspects of my own life as a woman, but fortunately I live in a decade where having all these things and being a mother are not entirely out of the question (but also not a given). 

Marty, though madly in love with Ernest, does not want to be tied down by motherhood in a way that would limit her opportunities. It's not as if Ernest Hemmingway was going to be home with a toddler while Marty was a war correspondent. Above all else, Marty seemed to be committed to being her own true self, and there is so much to admire about that.

Ernest and Marty

The strong Marty chapters are interspersed with, what I thought were, unnecessary chapters from Ernest's third person voice. I thought this detracted from the overall story. Perhaps McLain felt Ernest was not coming along so well in the book. I was hardly ready to feel sympathy for him after his bizarre behavior with Hadley and Pauline Pfeiffer in The Paris Wife. 

I also have a bit of a weird feeling about the book because I've read a lot about Marty Gellhorn and I know that she was adamant that she not be treated as just Ernest Hemmingway's third wife. I think her phrase was about being a "footnote" in someone else's life. She was an amazing war correspondent, a novelist, and an interesting person in her own right. And, probably to Marty Gellhorn's consternation, this book ends, abruptly I'd say, right after her relationship with Ernest ends. It's a disservice to the bulk of work she performed and wrote after her divorce from Hemmingway, and the name she made for herself independently through the later decades. I would have loved to stay on the journey with her through her years in Korea and Vietnam. So I found the timeline of the book to be a bit of a betrayal to the heroine.