Some books stay with us because of their stories. Others because they give us one idea that changes the way we see something forever.

I have always loved books like that.

They don’t need to be long. They don’t need to contain everything. Sometimes a hundred pages — or even fewer — can hold an idea that keeps unfolding years after we first encounter it.

These are five relatively small books I have returned to again and again. Some I first read decades ago. They are very different from one another, but each has shaped something in the way I think about love, relationships, meaning and what it means to be human.

1. The Art of Loving — Erich Fromm

This is a classic for a reason.

Fromm talks about love in all its forms — romantic love, parental love, self-love, love between people — not as something that simply happens to us, but as something we learn to do. Something we cultivate. An art we practise.

He challenges one of our most persistent ideas about love: that the main challenge is finding the right person to love us. Instead, he asks a much more interesting question: How capable are we of loving?

I return to this idea often in my work with couples. We put enormous energy into finding love, choosing love and keeping love — and much less into developing our own capacity to love well.

A small book, but a radical shift in perspective.

2. Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl

There are books you read, and books that somehow become part of the way you understand life.

This is one of those for me.

Frankl was a psychiatrist who writes from the unimaginable experience of surviving Nazi concentration camps. At the heart of the book is a simple but profound idea: we all need something to live for.

He writes about finding meaning even in the face of suffering. But for me, it’s also a book about freedom — the freedom we still have in how we meet what happens to us, even when we cannot change it.

It is not a simplistic message about positive thinking. It goes much deeper — into how we find meaning, purpose and freedom even when life is not as we would choose it.

So many ideas in such a small book — the kind that stay with you long after you finish it.

3. The Four Agreements — Don Miguel Ruiz

This may be the simplest book on this list — four agreements to live by. But that simplicity is exactly what makes it so powerful.

The four agreements are deceptively straightforward: Be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions. Always do your best.

I love all four, but don’t take things personally is probably the one I come back to most, particularly in relationships. So much unnecessary suffering comes from interpreting another person’s mood, withdrawal, reaction or behaviour as being about us.

Of course, sometimes it is about us. But often we are meeting another person's history, fears, defences and inner world — just as they are meeting ours.

It’s one of those books that gives you a few simple principles for living with more freedom and love — and then a lifetime to practise them.

4. The Way of Man — Martin Buber

This is probably the tiniest book on my list. And perhaps the one that requires the most space after reading it.

There’s something timeless about Buber’s thinking, and something very special about reading his original words. It’s philosophical and spiritual and through beautiful stories from the Hasidic tradition, he explores individuality, purpose and the question of how we find our own way in life.

One of the ideas at its heart is beautifully simple: our task is not to become someone else.

We can spend enormous amounts of our lives comparing, imitating, pleasing or trying to become the person we imagine we should be.

Buber points us somewhere else: towards discovering what is uniquely ours to live.

He addresses some enormous questions:

What is your path?

What are you here to do?

And what if the place to begin is exactly where you are?

It is the kind of book where I can read a single paragraph and then need to put it down — and find myself thinking about it for days.

5. The Drama of the Gifted Child — Alice Miller

This is a classic I first read around 25 years ago, and I still recommend it to clients today.

The title can be misleading. “Gifted” here doesn’t mean academically gifted. It means emotionally attuned.

Miller is interested in the child who becomes exceptionally good at reading the emotional environment — sensing what others need, adapting, performing, pleasing or suppressing parts of themselves in order to maintain connection, often losing touch with parts of themselves along the way.

Those adaptations can be remarkably intelligent. But they can also follow us into adulthood. We may become highly competent, caring and attuned to others while having surprisingly little access to our own needs, anger, vulnerability or desires.

It’s not always an easy read, but the questions it raises about childhood adaptation and the adult self remain deeply valuable — and it can change the way you understand your childhood, and yourself.

Small books. Long conversations.

What connects these five books for me isn't a particular school of thought. It's that each, in its own way, asks us to look again at something we so easily take for granted:

What does it really mean to love? Where do we find meaning? How much do we take personally that was never really about us? Are we living our own life, or the life we learned to live? And how much of who we are today began as an adaptation to the people we once needed?

Perhaps that's what I love most in a book.

Not one that gives me all the answers, but one that leaves me with better questions.

What is one small book that has stayed with you for years?

This article was written by Dr. Kalanit Ben-Ari, a psychologist, psychotherapist, trainer, and international speaker. With a doctorate in Psychology, Dr. Ben-Ari has over 25 years of experience in the field and currently runs a private clinic in Hampstead, London. She is also MAFS Israel expert, an author, speaker, therapist supervisor, and faculty member of the Imago International Institute. She served as the Chair of Imago Relationships Therapy UK from 2013 to 2023.

Dr. Ben-Ari leads The Association Hub, a vibrant community for therapists, and Awakening Love, an online course helping couples reconnect and grow together.