Volodya, Thanks for the quick response :)
Generally, you don't have to specify that you are using shared libraries. In fact, on modern Linux, every library is shared. I recommend you add /usr/local/boost_1_41_0/prefix/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.
I've seen this workaround mentioned by a few people, but a lot of the things I've read say that you should -never- change the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable, so I'd rather just be able to specify a link option or something else to get it to link properly.
In fact, I'd recommend creating ~/local directory and using that as prefix for installing anything you install from source. Then, add ~/local/bin to PATH and ~/local/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and you'll no longer have to tweak any settings when you install something new.
Ok I'll try this for now and see if it will at least work. Thanks for your suggestions.