Books Piled Up

I've written previously about my obsessions over my to-be-read pile. Sometimes I think it is like a mania. I know The Wife does. Right now my to-be-read pile consists of 41 books. I like to think I would have made some serious headway if not for Ghost Wars, probably could have gotten it down to 35-38 books. I say this not to impress you but to state that I may have a bit of a problem. At a book a week I'll finish all these books on August 23, 2008. Of course, between Hannukah, Christmas and my birthday and my own buying this pile will grow even if I read them at a steady pace.
Where did these books come from? It turns out I've spent virtually no money on them.

• 17 are from paperbackswap.com. I've received 46 books and sent out 40 since I joined in December 2005. And the thing is, as I read these books I just exchange them for even more books.
  
• 6 are books The Wife has read.
  
• 4 were picked up on the street. People are constantly leaving books out on the street in Brooklyn and few things scare The Wife more than seeing a pile of discarded books while taking a weekend family stroll.
• 3 were bought when I was a member of the Hard Case Crime Club. These are the only books I paid retail for with my own money and weren't first read by somebody else. (I sound like a White House press secretary with all these qualifiers.)
• 3 were bought used.
• 3 are hand-me-downs from my father-in-law. He gives me lots of books but these are the few I actually want to read. Mostly, they sit unwanted on paperbackswap.com.
• 3 were gifts.
• 2 were bought on a gift card I got for my birthday in January. I picked these books out of all the ones at Barnes & Noble and still they've been sitting around for more than six months.

I'll check in on this later to see if I've made any progress.