Herman's "trauma and recovery" was good, I had "oh shit!" moments of understanding all the way through. It is old though, there has been a lot of work done in the 22 years since it was first published.
Bessel van der Kolk's "the body keeps the score" is up to date and a good read. he's pretty ecclectic, and embraces what works, even when it is considered "alternative" by the lamestream, for example he was an early adopter of EMDR, and yoga. I found his postscript hard going though. he strayed out of his area of expertise and he really does not have a good understanding of economics, of the debates and evidence around gun ownership, or of what state sector provision ends up looking like in practice. The same is also true of Gabor Mate and Robert Sapolsky, they are excellent in their fields (trauma and stress) but fall flat when they stray outside of them.
I'd read good things about Vaughn's "The talking cure" but paid over the odds for a quick and quite light read. It'll fill a rainy sunday afternoon, but there is better stuff out there, plus she's a freudian, and I really do not like freud.
I've just finished Sebern Fisher's "neurofeedback for developmental trauma" It was excellent, I got the recommendation from van der Kolk, who wrote a foreward to it. highly recommended.
I'll go a little off beat, and suggest you look up some of the critters who teach males how to seduce women - so that you can learn how to spot their games if anyone tries them on with you. books with titles like "bang!"
also, an ex of mine recommends a blog called "baggage reclaim" about relationships and interpersonal boundaries. My ex has met the woman who writes the blog and is very impressed with her.
getting back to therapy books, I think I've linked "the mindful way through depression" audiobook, which is usually up on youtube. It really is good. download it though as it gets taken down fairly frequently due to copyright.
I got an old book cheap on "counselling for PTSD" it is so out of date and is totally dangerous - following its instructions will lead to retraumatization.
A really inspiring book, even if it is about 12 years old, was "madness explained" by Bentall.
He's looking at psychoses; schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar etc, and he subjects the current paradigm to the kind of scruitiny that it needs - needless to say, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny and criticism. It is quite inspiring to find out that about 10% of the population experience "hearing voices" with absolutely no ill effects. There is even a group for them in the Netherlands, with the aim of achieving liberation from medicalization in the same way that homosexuality and bisexuality have achieved liberation from false medicalization by psychiatrists. Bentall goes right into the logical arguments and the evidence - so it's not a light read, but it is one that you would be well capable of following and enjoying.
I'm currently reading up on DBT (linehan's skills manual and the manual she co authored on DBT for suicidal adolescents). I'm neither suicidal nor do I think I have BPD, but I do know sufficeint people with both suicidality and BPD that I thought I'd better read up. They are manuals rather than light reads.
