Every book must be chewed to get out its juice.

- Chinese Proverb

Well, another year has packed her bags, slammed the door and vanished down the street before we really got to know each other. Suddenly, I find myself brooding over nearly 60 reviews of the past 12 months. I immediately noticed that many of the books, which originally appeared charming and wonderful now resembled former acquaintances who went into politics and gradually lost whatever charm or appeal they once had. Mind you, now, my reading is eclectic and has little in common with the “best-seller list” or mainstream fiction. I select books like a kid in a candy store who “tastes” a page or two and selects items to take home on the basis of this brief savoring. These are the 10 that have a “lingering, pleasant (or memorable) aftertaste.” The numbers or order of the list does not mean much, and all of them can still be purchased at the local bookstore.

1. Savage Beauty

Nancy Mitford’s Savage Beauty qualifies as the best biography of the year and possibly the decade. Painstakingly researched and supported by hundreds of personal interviews with friends, foes and formerly lovers, Mitford records the foibles, deceits and astonishing talents of a fascinating woman (Edna St. Vincent Millay) who decided to become one of the greatest poets of the 20th century while experiencing every joy, pain and pleasure (approved or forbidden) that life had to offer. She succeeds.

2. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

One of America’s greatest storytellers, Louise Erdrich returns to her beloved (and mostly mythical) Ojibwe, who live on the remote reservation called Little No Horse. After a 10-year silence, the author continues the chronicle of the Kashpaws, Lamartines and Morrisseys — the same characters who drink, love and murder each other with an intensity that can best termed “epic.” The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is complex, ribald and unrelentingly fascinating as Erdrich narrates the career of Father Damien, a priest of “shifting gender” who comes to bring enlightenment to the Ojibwe, but is himself/herself seduced by their beliefs and traditions. (Any novel that begins with a nun having an orgasm while playing Chopin has my immediate interest.)

3. The Love Artist

The Love Artist took me totally by surprise, arriving on the shelf at City Lights bookstore without trumpets, impressive blurbs or extensive advance publicity. This is a sensual (sexy) book that follows the adventures of an aging Ovid who finds himself banished (for writing immoral books) to a primitive isle where he encounters a provocative nymphet (she literally rises from the sea) who may be the harbinger of two things: inexplicable pleasure, and the inspiration for his new literary triumph (a drama based on Medea). Jane Allison manages to combine the mythical and erotic in a memorable tale of love and betrayal. As those movie guys would say, “two thumbs up.”

4. The Long Home

Quite honestly, I was tempted to put William Gay on this list twice: Once for The Long Home and again for Provinces of Night. Both are that rare accomplishment — a novel that manages to recreate Appalachian speech, character and worldview with integrity and authenticity. Influences on Gay — Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Wolfe — manage to echo in Gay’s style without becoming mere mimicry. The Long Home presents a world that is both harsh and comic — inhabited by characters who may fail but acquire a kind of perverse nobility in the process.

5. The Rag and Bone Shop

The Rag and Bone Shop celebrates the world of Charles Dickens, recreating its pretensions, materialism, social ills and slums. Rackham’s novel gives us a Dickens as perceived by three characters: his contemporary, Wilkie Collins (rogue, drug addict, mystery writer); Dickens’ sister-in-law (his housekeeper and “platonic wife”); and a child actress who became Dickens’ mistress. The confessions of this trio produce a wracking good yarn, filled with misguided dreams, deception and treachery. I can’t wait to see what Jess Rackham, who teaches at UNCA, will do next.

6. Somebody Told Me

Rick Bragg was on my “ten best” list last year. Well, here he is again. After his award-winning All Over But the Shouting, Bragg did the logical thing. He put together a collection of the journalistic pieces that won him the Pulitzer — Somebody Told Me. Here they are — those brief, concise and vibrant news articles about Susan Smith’s trial, the aftermath of Waco, racism in Texas, floods in Alabama and radiation poisoning in New Mexico. There is lots of warm humor, too — chit’len cafes in Atlanta, how to make ice tea, street dancing in New Orleans and musings on the consequences of raising hogs on country and western music. Taken all in all, this collection is the many-faceted reflections of who we are in this country.

7. Clay’s Quilt

Silas House is the next generation in Appalachia. I heard him read from this novel at the Appalachian Writers Conference. House is young, good-looking and remarkably talented. (I was consumed with jealousy for days.) Clay’s Quilt takes place in coal-mining country. The protagonist has coal dust under his fingernails, but he isn’t here to deliver a diatribe on social injustice and the evils of coal mining. He drinks a lot, smokes a little pot, dances when he can, eats baloney sandwiches and rides through the half-deserted streets of his hometown with Lucinda Williams on the tape-deck. Oh, yes, there is love, death and the search for a father, too, but this novel’s greatest gift is the near-tangible details of mountain life.

8. At Home in the Heart of Appalachia

John O’Brien is getting a bit of belated attention for this wonderful “memoir,” At Home in the Heart of Appalachia. It’s about his return to his father’s region (Franklin, W.V.) and his slow but lasting “adjustment” to a region that has been repeatedly raped, saved, defined and stereotyped by corrupt politicians, investors, missionaries, legions of what the author calls the “come heres,” and the media. Despite the lingering scars that have left the natives cautious and skeptical about the outside world, O’Brien finds much to celebrate — primarily, the persistence of the people.

9. Divining Rod

Michael Knight, a young teacher at the University of Tennessee, has published two works: Divining Rod, a novel, and Dog Fights, a short story collection. Both deserve inclusion here, but I finally selected the novel. Much of the action focuses on the neighbors in a suburb (Sherwood, Ala.) and their interaction (or lack of it). The book glitters with memorable characters. I especially liked the sweet little lady who learns to use obscene language as a defense against intimidating neighbors — she gets hassled a lot as she trudges about the golf course with a divining rod searching for buried treasure. There is a murder, the consequence of an adulterous affair. The lover, the erring wife and the husband all seem victims — all characters conditioned to respond to stimuli that they neither question or understand.

10. A Primate’s Memoir

Anthropological studies may be informative, but they are rarely entertaining. A Primate’s Memoir manages to amuse, outrage and elicit a tear, yet the book remains a valuable contribution to the study of the similarities in animal and human behavior. In this instance, the creatures are a colony of baboons who love, fear, become cruel and suffer humiliation in a manner that is discomfortingly ... human. What lifts this study out of the arid sterility of scholarship is the author’s humanity — his self-deprecating humor and his consummate storytelling.

(Gary Carden is a writer, storyteller and lecturer whose book, Mason Jars in the Flood, was recently named Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. He can be reached at gcarden498@aol.com.)