Nina MacLaughlin's Blog, page 23
March 18, 2015
This all feels too good to be true
For The Millions, the lovely funny generous Edan Lepucki asked me some thoughtful questions about HAMMER HEAD. And in her intro, she wrote what is now my favorite description of the book: “It’s like if Annie Dillard had her own show on HGTV.”
Bodywise and Brainwise: The Millions Interviews Nina MacLaughlin
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For a short taste of the book, you can read a quick excerpt on the Huffington Post.
All Decked Out: Lessons from a Novice Carpenter
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I was especially excited to be included in Vogue’s Spring Book Guide, and to be described with comma queen Mary Norris’s Between You & Me as “two winningly tender, funny reckonings with labor and language.”
March 16, 2015
Today’s the day, folks. HAMMER HEAD officially exists in the...
Today’s the day, folks. HAMMER HEAD officially exists in the world! (Man oh man do I have some active butterflies in my guts.)
Buy the book! Come to a reading! I’d love to see some of you wonderful rag-tag gang of Tumblr folks.
Tonight, March 16 at 7 pm, I’ll be at Harvard Book Store! Hometown Hammer Head launch party insanity.
Thursday evening, March 19, calling all Maine dwellers. I’ll be at Sherman’s on Exchange Street.
And next week, NEW YORK!
WORD on the 25th with Meredith Turits, with free drinks care of the generous folks of Book Riot.
And on March 26, the New York launch, sponsored by Tumblr, with guests including (I still can’t believe it): KATE BOLICK, ROSIE SCHAAP, and CARA NICOLETTI. We’ll toast and drink and snack and party and tell stories about building, bartending, butchering, and the weird powerful choices made in life.
And more, up and down the east coast.
March 11, 2015
housingworksbookstore:Tumblr presents Nina MacLaughlin’s Hammer...
Tumblr presents Nina MacLaughlin’s Hammer Head launch party
with Rosie Schaap, Cara Nicoletti, and Nina (carpentrix)!Thursday, March 26 at 7pm / Free
A carpenter, a butcher, and a bartender tell badass stories about work and writing. With (free) drinks to drink and (free) snacks to snack.“No other book has made me want to reread Ovid and retile my bathroom floor, nor given me the conviction that I can do both. I loved it.” - Rosie Schaap
Carpenter, butcher, bartender, stories, drinks, snacks. Goddammit I cannot wait for this. COME!
March 9, 2015
SAVE THE DATES!
A few events I’m particularly excited for:
Monday, March 16, the hometown launch at Harvard Book Store! Some of you live around here. If you’ve got not plans that evening, drop in!
Wednesday, March 25 at WORD in Brooklyn in conversation with Bustle’s Senior Culture Editor Meredith Turits (whose Tumblr you can follow here). Brooklyn!
Thursday, March 26, at Housing Works in Manhattan. This is the biggie, folks. The New York launch. Co-sponsored by Tumblr (holy moly, THANK YOU!) and with books for sale from the champions at McNally Jackson, as well as special guests including Rosie Schaap (Drinking with Men) and Cara Nicoletti (lovely butcher at the Meat Hook and author of the forthcoming Voracious) as well as some others to be announced. Come, come, come. Drinks and toasts and stories about drinking and eating and reading and building.
You’ll find the full schedule below. I’m looking forward to all of it.
Monday, March 16 – Harvard Book Store – Cambridge, MA, 7 pm
Thursday, March 19 – Sherman’s Books – Portland, ME, 6:30 pm
Sunday, March 22 – Concord Bookshop – Concord, MA, 3 pm
Tuesday, March 24 –Newtonville Books – Newton Centre, MA, 7 pm
Wednesday, March 25 – WORD – Brooklyn, NY 7 pm
Thursday, March 26 – Housing Works, New York launch co-sponsored by Tumblr, with special guests – New York, NY, 7 pm
Saturday, April 4 – Avid Bookshop – Athens, GA, 6:30 pm
Tuesday, April 7 – Charis Books & More – Atlanta, GA, 7:30 pm
Wednesday, April 8 – Malaprop’s Bookstore – Asheville, NC, 7 pm
Wednesday, April 15 – Porter Square Books – Cambridge, MA, 5 pm
Thursday, April 16 – Water Street Bookstore – Exeter, NH, 7 pm
Saturday, April 18 – Maine Coast Book Shop – Damariscotta, ME, 11 am
Thursday, April 23 – Pete’s Reading Series – Brooklyn, NY, 7:30 pm
Thursday, April 30 – Longfellow Books – Portland, ME, 7 pm
Saturday, May 16 – Gaithersburg Book Festival – Gaithersburg, MD, details TBA
To revisit, you can find the full schedule on my website: http://www.ninamaclaughlin.com/
stereostories:The Making of a Carpenter by Nina MacLaughlin!!!!...
The Making of a Carpenter by Nina MacLaughlin!!!! It is fair to say that I am the most excited person at McNally Jackson’s right now and maybe even all of New York City. I know her, I just shouted to a stranger. She’s my friend! She wrote this! #ninamaclaughlin #hammerhead #norton #soulfriend (at McNally Jackson Books)
Oh you guys, hooray for Sharon Steel (and the amazing writing you’ll find on her blog Stereo Stories). What a thing to see the book in her hands!
One perk of doing work for a friend: getting to go back to
the...
One perk of doing work for a friend: getting to go back to
the kitchen we helped create. At the end of most jobs, we pack up the tools and
leave the place looking pristine and ready for life to start taking place
around it. We’re left to imagine what the place will look like once the tea
kettle is back on the stove, once the bananas spoon the grapefruits in a
fruitbowl in the corner, once the smell of fresh paint and new wood gives way
to the homey smells of an active kitchen.
This fall, we re-did the kitchen of my great friend
and her husband. I was back this weekend after some months of life accumulating
around it. Light poured in from the large window we’d wrestled with on ladders.
It smelled like coffee and a whisper of spring from the tulips on the counter.
It’s improved every time I’ve seen it, becoming less the collected objects of
our work, the black walnut cabs, the cork floor, the concrete countertops, and
more a cohesive, comfortable, functional, and lovely place to spend a morning.
March 4, 2015
Our furnace died on Thursday night with no chance of reviving...
Our furnace died on Thursday night with no chance of reviving it. By Friday morning, we could see our breath in the apartment. “No heat here until the end of next week,” our landlord told us. On Saturday morning, we left to thaw at Jonah’s parents’ house. I brought my slab of white oak with me to sand while we were there. I asked if I could use the garage – all I need is a stool, I said. I’ll sand it in my lap. I was met with a cocked head and an expression that said don’t be silly. I’m used to having no real workspace. At our small apartment I use the narrow alley behind our house, makeshift sawhorses, haphazard set-ups, less than ideal working conditions made to work. “No,” said Jonah’s father. “Please,” he urged. “Use my workbench.” He cleared a space and left me to it. He built the thing himself, thirty years ago or more. I stood at it, sturdy, the perfect height, well-used, scarred and textured, with neat tins and coffeecans holding chisels, pipe-cleaners, well-maintained tools, and I watched the snow fall out the window as I sanded. The snow clung to branches in the forest behind the house and the wood went from rough to smooth. Warmth there comes from more than just the fireplace.
When I worked at the Boston Phoenix, the Weekly Dig was our...
When I worked at the Boston Phoenix, the Weekly Dig was our rival paper. There was a spirited competition between the two rags — the Phoenix had history; the Dig had scrappy fire. The Phoenix died. The Dig lives on. And, what the fuck, this week, my face is on the cover. I don’t know what to say beyond that. If you’re in Boston, pick up a copy at a bar somewhere. If not, you can read an excerpt here.
March 3, 2015
"A slight and sinewy man, Mr. Sullo, 69, struck up a...
"A slight and sinewy man, Mr. Sullo, 69, struck up a conversation. A flimsy prickle of a pencil mustache lined the rim of his upper lip, which was, he explained, his ‘nod to Bob’ (as in Dylan). He’d been coming to Masse’s since the mid-’60s. ‘I’m not a religious man,’ he said in the parking lot, traffic picking up as the afternoon faded toward rush hour. ‘I don’t believe in God, but I take comfort in goodness. Masse’s has a goodness about it. It’s not about messing with your head. It’s not about taking advantage of you.’ He talked of photographing the Boston folk scene back in the ’60s, about coming out of the resistance movement. ‘Love, peace, all that stuff is coming back, and Masse’s fits into that groove.’ It’s not a model, he said of the store, it’s a movement. It’s a movement, I was reluctant to tell him, that might have less steam in its engine than Sullo believes.”
For the Boston Globe, I wrote a piece about a hardware store in Cambridge. It was neat to see it in the actual fishwrap, on the front page of a whole section. I’ll just go ahead and say: I’m proud of this one. Give it a read.
The amazing and powerful Molly Broxton (follow her if...
The amazing and powerful Molly Broxton (follow her if you’re not, goddammit) spotted HAMMER HEAD in the window of McNally Jackson in New York City. It lives in the world!
