Mindy Kaling’s ‘Why Not Me?’ goes inside her Hollywood circles

Tickets for Mindy Kaling’s book reading earlier this month in Washington, D.C., sold out in two minutes. On Twitter she has 4.64 million followers, nearly double the number of fellow TV boss-lady-turned-author Lena Dunham.

So even if the star and creator of “The Mindy Project” had filled the pages of her new book, “Why Not Me?,” with nothing more than old tweets, the thing would sell — fast. Happily, though, that’s not what she did.

Instead, 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 has found it and is more than comfortable inviting people to spend time with her there. As was the case in “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?,” the writing in “Why Not Me?” is conversational and punchy, and the subjects are wide-ranging.

The Massachusetts native formerly known as Kelly Kapoor from “The Office” covers wedding etiquette (“There are few things that I have more ideological problems with than the concept of the ‘honeyfund’ ”); the commercialization of female empowerment (“I just sometimes get the sneaking suspicion that corporations are co-opting ‘girl confidence’ language to rally girls into buying body wash”); and what it’s really like to make out with someone for the purposes of television comedy (“If you interview any actor about having to do sex scenes, you always get the same answer: they ‘hate’ doing them. … I am here to tell you that they are all lying”).

Kaling knows her young, female fans see her as both aspirational and accessible, and she deftly manages to come across as both. She liberally name-drops but without sounding braggy. (After describing an embarrassingly overconfident attempt to interrupt a party conversation between John Kerry and Bradley Cooper, for example, she admits that her subsequent interaction with Cooper was “a solid B-minus.”)

She invites readers into her Hollywood circle via photo-illustrated essays of life on the set of “The Mindy Project,” which was recently picked up by Hulu after getting canceled by Fox.

Although acknowledging that she has achieved “(minor) fame,” she also punctures any celebrity glamour balloons. In the first chapter, after sharing two striking pictures of herself taken during Vogue and InStyle magazine cover shoots, she asks, “Curious what I looked like before all these people worked their magic on me?” On the next page, there’s a picture of Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Not surprisingly, she devotes a chunk of pages to her intriguingly complicated relationship with B.J. Novak, her close friend and love interest from “The Office.” Consider that chapter a teaser; the two recently signed a reported $7.5 million deal to co-write a book that may or may not shine further light on their Harry-and-Sally-ness.

As forthcoming as Kaling might be, there are also some things she has decided to keep private; though she acknowledges the death of her mother in the chapter on Novak, she never delves more deeply into the impact of that recent loss.

Kaling’s gift for capturing the awkward flutter of adult courtship speaks to what’s so enjoyable about “The Mindy Project” and suggests that maybe she’s the woman best suited to write a “Bridget Jones’s Diary” for the current decade. Hey, plenty of stars have tried their hand at novel-writing. Why not Mindy Kaling?

This story was originally published September 26, 2015 at 4:00 AM.