Book review... kind of...

This is more of a nostalgia piece.  I was telling someone the other day that I didn't read as a kid unless I had to which isn't entirely true.  One set of books I really loved was the Choose Your Own Adventure books. They were a series of short books written about the second person, you, and whatever adventure you were involved in giving you choices to make during the story that would generate a different ending depending upon the choices made. There were several authors, the ones I remember the most being Edward Packard and R.A. Montgomery. Each had a different style.

  (This is the full interview withe R.A Montgomery which lasted a little longer if interested.)

 The older books had up to 40 endings and although they're a little on the simplistic side, they're the ones I liked the best because there were so many possibilities. I liked the hands on approach to ingesting the story - being involved. Back when video games where limited, it was like role playing without having to interact with other people. By the late 80's though the amount of endings had waned to 9 or 10 endings... sometimes less. There was more detail in the story, but you didn't get as many choices and it was over too fast. Eventually they started making "super adventures" to indicate that it was more than 10 endings, though not usually more than 15.

 I lost them all after I moved out of my childhood home.  They got stored in a basement and ruined.  I've had fun recollecting some of them in the past few years.  Not nearly as many as I had because my mother kept getting them for me even when the endings dwindled down to 5 or so. So I've got a handful of them back.  There were tons of the old style books with 20 + endings, but I just decided to get the best of the ones that I had personally. My two favorites that I remembered the most fondly - Chimney Rock and Deadwood City.  I got the others pictured here as well.... Don't laugh at Space Vampire, it's actually not bad, lol!  I'm still hunting a couple of them down, but this is probably as big as this collection of mine will get again. Great nostalgia here.