A delightfully funny collection of essays by the Indian-American actor, Kunal Nayyar, who plays the loveable, sincere yet incurably dorky character Raj in The Big Bang Theory. In this revealing book, Kunal Nayyar traces his journey from a nervous little boy in New Dehli who mistakes an awkward first kiss for a sacred commitment, gets nosebleeds chugging Coca-Cola to impress the other students at his all-boys school to the confident guy on the set of one of television's most-watched shows who one day eve gets to kiss the woman of his childhood dreams: Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years. Throughout, Kunal introduces us to the people who helped him grow, chief among them his slick moustachioed father. From his father, Kunal learned the most important lessons of life: treat a beggar as you would a king. There are two sides to every story. A smile goes a long way. And, when in doubt, use a spreadsheet. Full of heart, but never taking itself too seriously, this is a coming-of-age story about a young man trying to find his place in between cultures, growing into himself as a person and a performer, and of the many embarrassing incidents that somehow miraculously prepared him to land the role that would make his career. Kunal Nayyar’s life, both onscreen and off, can be properly summed up in two words: lovable underdog. Luckily for readers, YES, MY ACCENT IS REAL: AND SOME OTHER THINGS I HAVEN’T TOLD YOU is a much longer book. Nayyar’s literary debut traverses the globe without following a map, by combining autobiographical essays with cocktail napkin scribbles, alphabetized rundowns, and amusing interstitial non sequiturs. The resulting book is refreshingly frank, and offers both homage to Nayyar’s New Delhi childhood and a wry nod to the listicles and first-person storytelling that populate much of the modern Internet landscape. YES, MY ACCENT IS REAL unfurls as an intercontinental journey replete with nostalgia by way of familiar cultural references and lighthearted musings on the origins of Indian holidays and traditions. Chapters romp through standard-issue coming-of-age tropes in a fashion that is anything but standard. Strange juxtapositions of the utterly embarrassing and the ultra-smooth abound—for instance, Nayyar grabs your heart in the book’s first pages by detailing the defining occasion of his very first kiss. He deftly muddled through the occasion, with only Kevin and Winnie from TV’s The Wonder Years as inspiration, only to be paired with the one and only Danica McKellar (a.k.a. Winnie Cooper herself) in a Big Bang Theory kissing scene years later. After bluffing his way into his first “real job” writing a manual for computer software, he spent his shifts