Choose Your Own Adventure
In the 1970s the Choose Your Own Adventure Books began to find a great deal of popularity. The invention of a second person story with multiple possible endings is attributed to Edward Packard who published the first such book titled “Sugarcane Island”. Later, several more books were published and there are now over 250 million copies in circulation. I have found that there are several different ways of reading such books and they represent different kinds of readers. I won’t tell you how read them though – that is private and privileged information!
Honest Reading
The most obvious and straight forward method for this sort of book is to read through it as it was intended. Each choice is made and the result is “lived with”. When the conclusion is reached, the reader must choose if he wants to read the book again and make a different choice or not. Often there are very few really good endings and if a reader happens on one of these he probably won’t find much interest in reading the whole story over again. Of course, dying several unlucky times might be just as strong a deterrent – nobody likes an unhappy ending (especially one that ends with “you breath your last…”).
Sticking Fingers
One particularly amusing way of reading through such book can often be spotted because the reader is constantly sticking his fingers as bookmarks, paging through and then paging back. The reader is basically “exploring” the book very cautiously and thus trying to avoid nasty endings that might come up. This way the reader also gains a broader view of the many options in the story and this lets him choose more educated choices while reading.
Of Note
Of note is one particular adventure titled Inside UFO 54-40. This particular adventure story has a paradise like ending that cannot be reached. The only way to find this ending is to randomly read the entries. Normally this is not a good way to read such books but in this case the readers are actually congratulated on their success.
