First released: 1st November 2011 By: Random House Audio
Audiobook length: 4 hr and 37 min Narrator: Mindy Kaling Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant
professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben
Affleck-impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and,
finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her
friends and coworkers with the sentence "Can I just say one last thing
about this, and then I swear I'll shut up about it?"
Perhaps
you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone
who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what
makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at
any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame
(so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or
how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in
these pages). If so, you've come to the right book, mostly!
In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy
invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations
on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed
stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy
Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door - not so much literally anywhere
in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or
Sri Lanka. My review:
Mindy Kaling sure knows her audience. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (yeah, I'm gonna have to abbreviate that title) starts with a FAQ where one of the questions is "Why isn't this book more like Bossypants?". I, and I'm sure many others, gave Kaling's book a try primarily because I enjoyed Bossypants so much and wanted to hear from another funny female. Kaling says upfront that her book isn't and can't be Bossypants.
And it isn't, but Is Everyone...? is still quite enjoyable in its own right. It's a short listen, and is an entertaining and diverting way to lighten up an afternoon. The best part is the first half, where Kaling talks us through her childhood and teen years, in which she was chubby, dateless and lame. It's a familiar refrain from comedians that they were geeky outsiders in high school, but that doesn't make Kaling's stories any less amusing and I chuckled many times.
It's also very interesting to hear about her road to becoming a TV writer. The behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into making a show is fascinating to me and Kaling's story about her first failed sitcom, Mindy and Brenda, really exposes a lot of the frustrating and downright offensive stuff that goes down (Kaling was essentially told she was too fat and dark-skinned to play herself).
However, once Kaling gets to the part where she's firmly ensconced in her role as a writer and recurring character on The Office, Is Everyone...? runs out of steam. Kaling's only thirty and even with keeping the book as short as it is, she doesn't have enough of her life and career behind her to fill the whole thing. The last third of Is Everyone...? is a hodgepodge of essays, in subjects as disparate as her ten favourite comedic moments in film, and her bizarre revenge fantasies for hypothetical slights. There are funny moments, but you do feel like Kaling is throwing in everything but the kitchen sink to stretch things out. I enjoyed Kaling's narration. Comedians are the best people to read their own writing - they know what timing and emphasis they want on the jokes. Kaling's voice is famously that of a very nasally Valley Girl, which is annoying to some ears, but it fits her personality and I can't imagine her words said any other way. Overall this audiobook is fun, but not a must-listen. It'd be a good listen while you do some necessary chores and Kaling is likeable enough that you won't mind hanging out with her. Rating: 3 stars
First published in Great Britain: 1st June 2012 By: MIRA Ink 'If she'd waited less than two weeks, she'd have been June who died in June. But I guess my sister didn't consider that.'
When sixteen-year-old Harper's sister June, the perfect, popular, pretty one to Harper's also-ran, commits suicide just before her high-school graduation, nothing in Harper's world makes sense anymore.
With her family falling apart, Harper has a plan - steal June's ashes and take her sister to the one place she always wanted to go: California.
Embarking on a wild road trip of impromptu gigs and stolen kisses with mysterious musician Jake, the one person who could hold answers about June, Harper's determined to find peace for her sister.
But will she find peace for herself along the way?
My review:
Grief is a common theme in contemporary YA and, while not necessarily breaking any new ground in the genre, Saving June is a solid and worthwhile addition. The book it most reminds me of is Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer, probably because of the friendship between Harper and her best friend Laney.
I struggled to comprehend the character of Harper at first, although in fairness, it's less that she was inconsistently written and more that she was different from what I assumed the character would be. I thought Harper's caustic attitude in the first few pages was a reaction to her sister's funeral, but it turns out that is her personality, dead sister or no.
She's a lot more aggressively snarky than I expected, but I did warm up to Harper, as being a little sister myself, a lot of her thoughts and feelings struck me as realistic. On the whole, I think the strength of Saving June is that the characters feel very real and their dialogue and behaviour seems true to teens. They smoke, they swear, they drink and they're sarcastic to hide their real feelings. Even characters who annoyed me (like the student protestors) reminded me of people I've known. Another strong point is the palpable sexual tension between Harper and Jake. The heat is coming off the page in some scenes and it would take a very steely reader not to swoon when Jake, say, sways Harper around the floor in a jazz club or sings softly into her ear as she falls asleep. I felt exactly the same way about Jake as Harper did - his deliberate evasiveness about June and his pretension about music bugged me, but I still wanted to jump his pretentious hipster bones. Ahem. Plus, I've gotta love a boy who's an ABBA fan (though, why be embarrassed about it, Jake? If loving ABBA is wrong, then I don't want to be right.). I did have a problem with the premise of Saving June, though and I think this is where being an adult reader of YA affects my perception. I think scattering somebody's ashes, against their parents' wishes and without allowing the parents to even be there, is a really awful thing to do and it bothered me that none of the teens, or the people who they shared their plan with, seemed to see this. I was hoping the whole time that Harper would have an eleventh hour change of heart and include her parents, but at the end I just had to let it go. Being a realistic YA novel, which deals with grief and loss, features a roadtrip and places a heavy emphasis on music, means that Saving June should appeal to readers who want more of all these things. For me it was a good read; for someone who's looking for a book which ticks all those boxes, it will be even better. Rating: 4 stars
This book was provided to me by the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Note: I really haven't felt like reviewing for a long time, but I have some NetGalley titles I must review and am hoping to get back into the swing of things.
First published: 11th September 2012 By: Random House Children's Books
Kami Glass is in love with someone she's never met—a boy she's talked to
in her head since she was born. This has made her an outsider in the
sleepy English town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, but she has learned ways to
turn that to her advantage. Her life seems to be in order, until
disturbing events begin to occur. There has been screaming in the woods
and the manor overlooking the town has lit up for the first time in 10
years. . . . The Lynburn family, who ruled the town a generation ago and
who all left without warning, have returned. Now Kami can see that the
town she has known and loved all her life is hiding a multitude of
secrets—and a murderer. The key to it all just might be the boy in her
head. The boy she thought was imaginary is real, and definitely and
deliciously dangerous.
My review:
I wasn't in the mood for 'quirky', but Unspoken did end up winning me over. The style and the tone of the writing is very different from what you'd normally find in paranormal YA: Most of the characters speak in the kind of "I sound super-serious and formal, but really I'm being funny" banter you'd find in a 1950's flick. Example: She found Rusty stretched out on the hearthrug with his arms behind his head. "You disgraceful object," said Kami. "What are you doing here?" "I'm buying a shotgun," Dad announced. "I live in the country. A shotgun is a reasonable thing to own."
It took me a while to get into, but the humorous dialogue comes so thick and fast that even if only about half of it lands, it still adds up to a very funny read. It wasn't long before I was sufficiently charmed. I liked all the characters. They're all given some idiosyncrasy to their personalities to make them amusing, like Kami's dad calling his children by the wrong name or Kami's friends and their epic laziness. Kami herself follows in the grand tradition of plucky girl reporters, throwing herself into sticky situations in her eagerness for a story.
What stands out in Unspoken - other than the quirky dialogue - is the unique premise of Kami and Jared's relationship. Kami's spent her whole life talking to a voice in her head that she thought was imaginary, only to discover it belongs to a real person. Despite its whimsical nature, Unspoken treats the implications of this bond very seriously and the novel is at its most interesting when it's examining what it's like to share a mind with another person; to know someone completely but to also never have anything you can truly keep to yourself. Added to that is the fact that Jared is a pretty damaged individual, who grew up in an abusive home and I really felt for Kami with the pressure she was under, to not think anything that would upset him.
This balance of lightness and seriousness also comes with a dash of creepiness. I love the idea of a town full of secrets and the more tidbits Kami discovers about Sorry-in-the-Vale and its history with the Lynburn family, the more I was dying to know what the secrets were. You know when worried townspeople warn you off asking questions and say "You don't want to know!" and it just makes you want to know even more? Happens all the time in this book and really builds an atmosphere of eerie mystery.
I appreciate that, despite being the first in the series, Unspoken didn't leave me hanging when it comes to revealing the truth about the Lynburns. However, I did find the reveal somewhat anti-climatic after a 300 page build-up (it's not really anything new or different) and I felt the ending in general felt messy and unfinished (I can't say more without giving away spoilers). Still, there was a lot to enjoy here and a slightly disappointing ending can't make me forget how much of this novel did make me smile.
Rating: 3.5 stars
This book was provided to me by the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.
