We finally broke down and bought a soapstone woodstove this past spring, and it's great! It can take a while to heat up the stone, but once that's warm it radiates heat for hours. I can load it up at night when I hit the sack (around 9:30) and there's a great bed of coals when I get up around 4:30. Take a look at the particular model we bought:
http://www.hearthstonestoves.com/Stoves/Wood/index.cfm?Prod=Homestead
It was pricey, but so far well worth the effort. The biggest problem was the installation; I had to have the flue relined, and I hemmed and hawed for months because I didn't want to shell out the bucks for that. But I finally had someone come in and do it right, and now I'm glad I did. They put in the 6" stainless steel pipe, cemented it in place, the whole nine yards -- and it makes for perfect conditions to set up a draft and get a good fire going. The stove we bought does not use a catalytic converter -- I wanted to avoid the necessity of replacing it, as another poster mentioned.
We have a medium-sized home and we're trying to heat with wood as much as possible. We still keep the oil tank topped off for backup, but we've only had to use it a couple of times. We're using up a lot of wood (well-seasoned oak), and burning through our supply more quickly than I thought we would (puns intended), and we might even run out this winter. Part of the problem is that they guy we bought our wood from shortchanged us -- we paid for two cords, and got 1.4 cords plus a lot of garbage (bark, dirt, even rocks). Since he dumped it from his truck in our driveway, I wasn't able to estimate the amount of wood until I got it stacked. We won't be buying from him again! I've actually scavenged quite a bit of wood after the storms that came through here last fall, so I think I have about two years' supply on hand.
Overall, it was a great investment and it'll reduce our use of fossil fuel for years. It won't get us out of the Middle East, but it's a step in the right direction.