Sunday, May 25, 2008

Choose Your Own Adventure


When I was a kid I loved reading books in the Choose Your Own Adventure series. They were interactive books, the pre-internet, the wireless video game. You'd read along in these books and in certain parts of the stories you could make a choice "To choose to take the magic diamond turn to page 136, to choose to use your secret potion turn to page 130". The page you chose would lead you to other choices and the culmination of the choices you made would lead you to a certain conclusion to the story. I always wanted to keep track of my choices so I could be sure and read the book with every possible combination of choices fulfilled but I was too lazy to keep track.

The internet is my new Choose Your Own Adventure and I have just as much trouble putting it down these days as I did those books when I was a kid. There's just so much to look at, so much to learn, so many links leading you to a different destination and the time keeps sneaking past, I go to bed way too late, my butt gets numb, my eyes get all wonky but I just can't tear myself away. Maybe the next click will show me something wonderful, maybe the next thread will teach me something important. I just don't want to miss something.

As a side note, I did an etsy search to see if there were any crafts made from my beloved series and apparently in the craft world "Choose Your Own Adventure" is commonly used to mean you get to choose color of the object. I find that disappointing. I guess I was hoping for something more interesting and intriguing, like the books.

6 comments:

  1. ohmygosh!! Choose Your Own Adventure was my fave books to! I remember checkin em out of the library at school all the time and buying them at bookstores. I was such a bookaholic even today to this day!

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  2. Those were also my favorite books! Memories...lol! I need to find some for my son. We can't let them fade into obscurity!

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  3. My Mom's a librarian, I read my way through the library when I was a kid. THose were always my favorite books, too :-)

    It would be cool to search Etsy like 'choose your own adventure', but choose your own color, you're right, just doesn't seem quite as exciting...

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  4. I think they started making them again with redesigned covers and updated language. Hard to believe the language would already need updating, are we really that old?! They also made a Choose Your Own Adventure DVD!

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  5. The Bohemian had many of these. I don't remember if they were passed on to him or if Lizardbreath ended up with them. Check it out.

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  6. I loved those books when I was a kid!

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