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In the midst of more process-building and re-building in my office (October and November have lasted a long time) and parenting at home (Mouse on the mend but still seeing therapist twice a week for the foreseeable future), it has been a month of Improving Literature (my preferred term for self-help books) here in the Dino Nest. This is partially an outgrowth of my reading the month before for the philosophy essay that didn’t happen and partially the result of my Facebook correspondence with a college friend on the topic of self-loathing. Somehow I went from continental philosophers‘ views on fame and the self to revisiting The Second Sex and The Feminine Mystique while mentally arguing with a bunch of old Camille Paglia interviews. Then I read When She Makes More by Farnoosh Torabi because I was looking for popular models of new-fangled Salary Mom marriages. What I took away from the book was that Salary Wives are more likely to stay married if they don’t go out of their way to defer to their husbands and that the most marriage-protective way a Salary Wife can keep from being overwhelmed by disproportionate demands for domestic and/or emotional labor is to outsource that sh*t to the greatest extent possible. Thinking about how useful that advice and some competent financial decision-making might have been in my life circa 1996 plunged me into a place where I was particularly open to Unworthy: How To Stop Hating Yourself by Anneli Rufus. And I have to say, it helped. So did Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin.