Daniel Woodrell – Winter’s Bone

It’s been a while since I’ve read good page turner, and this one was very good. It’s an interesting story of meth culture in one of the many pockets of extreme poverty and exist around the Missouri Ozarks. Woodrell is a Missouri author, and I’ll definitely be reading more of his stuff.

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Spring Reading

Candy Girl: A year in the life of an unlikely stripper, Diablo Cody.
One of my favorite bloggers finally publishes the story of the year she spent stripping.

Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.
Two of my other favorite bloggers have published their mainifesto for saving the Democratic Party from it’s big-business, Beltway, old-schooly self.

Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastrophe, Jeremy Leggett.
Yet another doomsday scenario for the coming post-petroleum age, although more practical and less apocolyptical than Kunstler’s book.

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James Howard Kuntsler – The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

Kuntsler examines what the future could be like after the oil runs out.  He thinks we reached peak oil sometime between 2000 and 2005, meaning half the world’s available oil is gone and each year we’ll produce less and less.  He thinks we have 30 years of oil left, but skyrocketing prices will cause chaos long before then.  Unfortunately, he’s not too hopeful that alternatives like hydrogen will be ready before the oil runs out.

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Bill Lambrecht – Big Muddy Blues : True Tales and Twisted Politics Along Lewis and Clark’s Missouri River

Publisher’s Weekly:

While the Missouri is not as muddy as it was before it was dammed, straightened, channelized and turned into what environmentalists call the world’s biggest barge ditch, the political wranglings surrounding it are murky indeed. Journalist Lambrecht (Dinner at the New Gene Cafe) deftly untangles the confrontation between an alliance of farmers, barge operators and real estate developers who want the river managed for industrial convenience, and environmentalists and recreation and tourist interests who want to restore some of its meanderings and seasonal flows and revive floodplain ecosystems. The controversy also pits the Army Corps of Engineers, custodian of dams and canals, against the Fish and Wildlife Service, guardian of endangered species. Meanwhile, the upriver Dakotans and downriver Missourians squabble over divvying up the river’s waters.

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Dean Koontz – Life Expectancy

A regular Joe who just happens to be stalked by a family of deranged circus clowns.

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