I am really new to Jhumpa Lahiri, having just read Interpreter of Maladies, her first published work and a Pulitzer-Prize winning collection of short stories, earlier this month. But I feel no hesitation in endorsing her anyway, because she was always an author I was going to get around to reading. She has served in a Joan Didion-like role in my life, as a critically-acclaimed author with a fairly robust body of work that I just always had on my list of things to read, but never found the motivation to get to it.

I've very happily remedied that with Joan Didion by gulping down three of her non-fiction works in a month and hanging a photo of her with her Corvette in Malibu up in my office (my job may or may not involve American automotive history). I'd like to think that I'm about to embark on a similar experience with Jhumpa Lahiri, but as much as I admired Interpreter of Maladies, I found it too heartbreaking to read with much enthusiasm. I've still got Outlander on my nightstand, and at the end of a long day, when faced with the prospect of reading either of those two books, you can imagine which is the easier choice. I am anxious to try one of her novels soon, and I'm almost done with Outlander anyway so that very thick and heavy distraction will soon be gone (I'm trying not to think about the fact that there are seven more to go).

Just in case you needed another reason to read Jhumpa Lahiri, you should know that she is the favorite author of Mindy Kaling, and inspired the name of Dr. Mindy Lahiri on 'The Mindy Project.'