Are we going to run out of oil?
Will there be enough water to drink?
Are all the coastal areas going to be flooded as the ice cap melts?
Will our kids be able to find jobs that pay a living wage?

Today we will restrict ourselves to:
Where is all the garbage going to go?

If you think the United States is no longer producing anything, then think about the 1.3 tons of garbage that each American produces each year.

Two recent books follow the trail of trash:

Garbage Land: on the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte and
Gone Tomorrow: the Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rogers

Don't try to read this book without a pencil and paper, because you'll need them. Pearl seduces you into wanting, needing, to read the books that she has read. If you're unwilling to fall under her spell, this might not be the book for you. As for me, I'm dazzled, I'm willing and I'm ready to read.

Nancy Pearl first enticed me with her first book, Book Lust. Both of these books are worth reading, owning even. These books make great gifts for the readers in your life.

If this isn't enough to satisfy you, visit Pearl's website. Here you can keep abreast of where she is (on tour) and find a list of the projects she's working on. According to one source, Pearl is currently working on a third book, this one about books for children and teens.

Timeless by Martina McBride holds on to the number three position for the second week on the Billboard 200 Chart. That album also stays a second week on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart.

The Hurston/Wright Foundation announced the winners of its 2005 Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards on Tuesday, November 1, 2005.

Winners in the four categories are:

Fiction
Maryse Condé – Who Slashed Celanire’s Throat

Debut Fiction
Chris Abani – GraceLand

Nonfiction
Alexis De Veaux – Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde

Contemporary Fiction
Tracy Price-Thompson – A Woman’s Worth (this will be ordered November 15, 2005)

The mission of the Foundation, founded in 1990 by novelist Marita Golden, is “…to develop, nurture and sustain the world community of writers of African descent.” Named after two giants of literature, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, the Legacy Awards are in their 6th year and have honored such esteemed authors as Mat Johnson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Wil Haygood.

Please, enough with the ponchos already. It seems every time I browse the library's knitting patterns, I come upon an item that makes me wonder, "What were they thinking?!"

It turns out I'm not alone in my feeling that certain sweaters should never see the light of day. You Knit What??is the funniest knitting blog I've chanced upon in a long time.

And for the fictionally inclined, Knit One, Kill Two is the beginning of a new mystery series by Maggie Sefton.

Ever wonder what's in your meat or where it comes from? Read Mad Cowboy : Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat, by Howard F. Lyman with Glen Merzer and find out!

Amazon.com says: "Persuasive, straightforward, and full of the down-home good humor and optimism of a son of the soil, Mad Cowboy is both an inspirational story of personal transformation and a convincing call to action for a plant-based diet -- for the good of the planet and the health of us all."

Today on Talk of the Nation guests discussed Wal-Mart's recent efforts to improve its public image in the wake of criticism over treatment of workers and an apparently scathing new documentary titled Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (on order). While you're waiting for the new DVD, you may want to try the 2004 PBS Frontline title Is Wal-mart Good for America?, left.

Founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994 to honor the memory of his late wife Doris, The Giller Prize is dedicated to celebrating the best in Canadian fiction each year.

Past winners include Alice Munro (2004) and Michael Ondaatje (2000).

This year's finalists are:

Luck by Joan Barfoot
The Time In Between by David Bergen
Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb
Alligator by Lisa Moore
A Wall of Light by Edeet Ravel

The winner will be announced on November 8th. I expect U.S. publishers are already scrambling for the rights.

Also coming soon, another adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, this time starring Keira Knightley. Surprisingly, this is only the second big screen version of the novel by Jane Austen (the first being the 1940 Hollywood classic starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier), but the Library owns both the 1985 BBC version and the wildly popular 1995 BBC miniseries, left, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. P&P was also the source for the 2004 Bollywood musical Bride and Prejudice.

According to Variety, Jarhead, Hollywood's take on the United States' initial offensive against the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein doesn't come close to David O. Russell's Three Kings. The book, however, written by Anthony Swofford in 2003, is "a witty, profane, down-in-the-sand account of the war" and "a worthy addition to the battlefield memoir genre." (Publisher's Weekly).