This is a book of fifty essays ranging from one page in length to about twenty pages. It is the kind of book that is appropriate for the nightstand or even, dare I say meaning no disrespect, the bathroom. It is Michael McFee’s second prose book to go along with eleven volumes of poetry and two anthologies. His poetry has been recognized with a James Still Award of Writing About the Appalachian South from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He grew up in a working class Asheville family but has transitioned into a career as a creative writing professor at the University of North Carolina. The title of this book was chosen because the topics elevate aspects of his everyday life. The subjects of these essays include “My Inner Hillbilly,” and other autobiographical works, “Gradebook” and others about teaching, and “Voice” along with others about the craft of writing as well as “Table of Contents,” one of a dozen about the book as a physical object. “Appointed Rounds, Michael McFee’s beautiful, funny and heartbreaking new book of essays, is part memoir, part cultural criticism, and part song of praise for books themselves as physical as well as literary objects. . . . It is a book to fall in love with not merely read.” – Alan Shapiro.
Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2018. 222 pages. Trade paperback