Why I Shouldn't Be Adding Books to my TBR Pile...

So, yesterday I had y'all help me figure out which books I should order with my mad money Amazon gift card.  It seems Matched was mentioned by nearly everyone, so I think if I don't win it in a blog contest I entered over at Novels During Naptime (yes by mentioning it I am decreasing my chances, but if you aren't following Karen, you should be), Matched will definitely be on my list.  As for picking the other two... gosh.  So. Hard.  Across the Universe will probably make it (Again, assuming I don't win it in a contest), and I'm torn between Anna and the French Kiss, Firelight, and The Iron King (Actually I'm torn between more than that and the longer I wait the more my list will change (hello... Desires of the Dead??)

Here is a quick grainy photo I snapped of my bookshelf this morning:

My insanely handy husband (maybe I should be calling him Handy??? :) built this for me a couple years back (I think he could sell them...), and it's still unfinished. I cannot decide what color to paint it!!! I tested out some reds and they all looked hideous, tried chocolate brown but the books would get lost on such a dark color. So there it sits. Just plain wood.   

Anyway, there are quite a few holes you see on my shelf because of the reorganizing I did for the sake of this picture, which I'm thinking should stay to inspire me.  Let me draw your attention to the large section mid right:

Blogging friends, I give you my TBR pile.  Now... this collection has been building for several years, some of them bought back when I had a steady paying job and I frequently took my lunch breaks at Borders (hey, they sent me the coupons... and now that they are facing bankruptcy, I sort of blame my old company for laying me off and keeping me from spending money there), some of them (7) I won in blog contests (it really does pay to enter them {ok, I see Twenty Boy Summer made it in that stack... that was an accident. I've already read it, but I won a copy last week along with 4 others and apparently didn't take it out of the stack}), some of them are loaners (those three books with the glare are The Vampire Diaries books my friend is letting me borrow--she read them when she was a teen so they are beat up and smell nice and old the way I like my books!), many of them were bought with gift cards I got for birthdays and Christmases. . . (can you tell I'm making excuses--trying to make it sound like I did not spend $300 on all of these hahaha).

No matter how I ended up with them, the point is, I have them, and I haven't read them... and there are a lot more of them than I thought.  So... no more book buying after my Amazon certificate unless I'm going to meet an author (hello Rachel Hawkins (of Hex Hall fame) on March 4th!) until I make a SERIOUS dent in this pile!!!!  

Anyone else have a ridiculously large TBR pile haunting them??