What to Read While Waiting for Master of None

Of course, if you haven’t already read it, this should be your first stop on the Aziz train. In today’s landscape with online dating and apps, you’d think it would be a cinch to find love. But as Aziz says, “the world is available to us, but that may be the problem.” A problem he tries to break down with a mix of anecdotes, humor and hard facts when needed.

Every family with an immigrant story can relate to the challenges of assimilating to the new country without throwing away the old. Add a couple of eccentric parents (dad’s a restauranteur with cockamamy ideas and big dreams; mom’s determined to protect her kids even if it totally embarrasses them) and you’ve got yourself a recipe for hilarity.

Novak’s surreal book of short stories explores what heaven would be like for celebrities and musicians of different generations all competing for attention at the same time, a relationship with a clingy robot, a Las Vegas-based intervention gone awry and more slightly bizarro scenarios.

Mindy and Aziz both share an insider-outsider perspective on American idiosyncrasies that offers a lot of insight into the ways we do things, but with the “laughing-with-us-not-at-us” perspective shared by someone going through it all at the same time.

A collection of some of her best magazine articles from the mid- to late-60s, the Academy Award–nominated screenplay writer and bestselling author throws her witty, sharp and vulnerable point of view at everything from pop culture pillars like Helen Gurley Brown and Mike Nichols to more intimate issues in a woman’s life like beauty standards and sex.

Sloane Crosley’s mercurial wit is the shining beacon in her observant and relentlessly funny first book of essays about being a young women trying to make it in New York City’s competitive and oftentimes idiosyncratic publishing world.

Before she was a bestselling author, Strayed was the anonymous advice columnist for a literary website under the pen name “Sugar.” Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious but always empathetic, her column forgives us our trespasses while holding us accountable for them at the same time.