Books like The Second Sleep

I must have read a hundred books about story structure over the years. Somehow, perhaps because of some story-related blind spot on my part, none of them ever seemed to stick.

My problem was always the middle. Middles can sag. It seems that a story's interior becomes little more than the wasteland a protagonist must traverse to get from the mystery of a beginning to the ultimate challenge of an ending.

Yorke's Into The Woods celebrates the middle. He reminds us that the essential crux of a story lies in its midpoint. Right at the heart of an effective story, he argues, lies a fundamental transformation, a change so great that the protagonist emerges with new powers into a new world.

Furthermore, by analysing stories in five acts rather than three, he allows for an elegant symmetry in which the first and fifth, second, and fourth acts mirror one another.

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What’s not to love about this? I first experienced The Big Sleep by viewing the classic Humphrey Bogart movie, and while I thoroughly enjoyed the film, I admit I was a bit perplexed over some of the plot points.

Reading the book cleared up some, but not all, of my confusion, and yet it’s a book I would read again and again. The classic 1930s setting of Los Angeles and Hollywood, the noir elements, and the hard-boiled detective, Phillip Marlowe, are an unbeatable combination in my mind.

David Brooks explores how we often climb one “mountain” of achievement—only to discover that true fulfillment lies on a second mountain, defined by purpose, service, and deeper values. This reflects the journey I've taken myself, and that I see so many entrepreneurs and startup founders take, where success becomes less about climbing higher and more about climbing in the right direction, guided by internal transformation and spiritual growth.

We all have that mountain inside of us that we need to climb, and it can be hard to admit that it's the mountain within that matters. I read this during a time of reflection, standing in the “valley” between two phases of life, uncertain of what came next. Brooks gave language to a transition I was already living—moving from outer success to inner fulfillment. His metaphor helped me see that real purpose isn’t about chasing accolades; it’s about showing up with… show more.

Martin Cruz Smith’s first book in his Arkady Renko series, Gorky Park, did very well and was made into a successful film. Later books are perhaps not so well known which I think is a great pity. Smith’s books ooze atmosphere, intrigue, and authenticity taking us into other worlds—in this case, that of Russian oligarchs and the deadly exclusion zone round Chernobyl. Arkady Renko is an incorruptible investigator in a society where everyone is on the make—another parallel I’ve found very applicable to my own work. And, unlike many thriller authors, Smith is also a brilliant writer of scintillating, gripping narrative. I’d love David Hidalgo and Arkady Renko to meet and have a chat over a few glasses of red wine, vodka, or both!

I read these as a young teenager and loved them, they’re star-spanning, rip-roaring tales of civilisations pitted against each other across the universe. Triplanetary is the first book of the Lensman series but we have to wait until book two; First Lensman, for the arrival of the titular characters.

The good guys (Hooray! Including Earth, of course) have an advantage in that certain of them have been selected by the Arisians to wear a device called the Lens - which allows them to harness their mental powers against the Boskonians (the bad guys - boo!), who are assisted by the evil Eddorians.

It’s all good fun, and I admit to the stories having influenced me slightly.

This book was first published in 1910. When I think of H.G. Wells, I think of his story about a time machine but this story, which I studied in school, was about changing your life, living your dream. Magic happens when Mr. Polly attempts suicide with the result that he becomes a hero and frees himself from the chains that bind him. I learned that all is possible. One does not need to be young, beautiful, and run a 4-minute mile to achieve one’s goals. With this thought in mind, I have run a marathon and entered two triathlons, finishing both and not coming last! I began my writing career at 70 years of age and am now the author of 5 books on mystery, history, and magic. 

This is a great gateway collection. In fact, this was one of the first anthologies of plant-related speculative stories that I read after falling in love with science-fictional plants. I jumped at it when I saw that it includes authors such as H. G. Wells and Algernon Blackwood and am glad I did. I have written about a number of the stories I met in this collection. Awesome extra: there are two other volumes in this series. 

The thing I like most about this book is that it is one of the most outstanding works of imaginative fiction I have ever read. Written as a sequel to The Time Machine, it celebrates the centenary of that book’s first publication. 

This journey is more varied than the original. The hero journeys to different times and places and even gets marooned in one. I love the way the author uses the basic concept to explore various aspects of humanity’s future, such as the entire race living on the inner surface of a Dyson sphere around Sol.

I enjoyed journeying to different times and worlds, each vividly and realistically portrayed. I strongly recommend this work for lovers of time travel stories.

During a lengthy hospital stay once, I needed to escape. Magazines were formulaic and newspapers dark. This book materialized on a library trolley. A plain dark blue hard cover looking dull and aged amongst the same-old paperbacks. After only the first story of this magical collection I was hooked away from all around me and into Wells’ tales of incredible imagination. Wells’ other shorts have become well known to the masses but here contained over forty lesser-known proto-sci-fi gems. In the way that Dickens did with characters that others could not, Wells was not constrained by conventions of science. The thought-provoking The Door in the Wall and The Red Room remain today are examples of skill for all contemporaries to aspire to.

I absolutely love the concept of this book. The idea that someone could make human-animal hybrids intrigued me. 

Of course, typical of most humans, the characters in this story never see the hybrids as “good enough”. I do understand that one of the themes in this story is the struggle humans go through with their more “animalistic” nature. However, I’ve never understood that. 

I saw the Beast Folk as better than humans, especially once they accepted who they are. I love that about animals. They don’t care what they look like or who they love. They are wholeheartedly themselves at every moment in their lives.