# Choose Your Own Adventure! Remember those days?



## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

So I broke out a box of old Choose Your Own Adventure books the other night. Oh what fun....but oh so stressful reading these things!  So many decisions! Anyone else read these books in junior high as well?


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## matt youngmark (Jan 11, 2011)

Saw your post and had to smile. I loved them so much I wrote my own!

I think my all time favorite from the original series, though, is "War with the Evil power Master." Because anyone who calls himself "The Evil Power Master" is a dude who knows what he stands for.


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## Eltanin Publishing (Mar 24, 2011)

Did you know those books are now available on kindle? It's nice to be able to bookmark choice points to come back to, and even leave yourself notes about what you tried the first time.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Choose Your Own Adventure Titles


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## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

A company called Choice of Games has similar stuff available as a Kindle app. And I've played 'em on my smart phone as Android apps.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_15?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=choice+of+games&sprefix=choice+of+games


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## matt youngmark (Jan 11, 2011)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Choose Your Own Adventure Titles


Rudolf Kerkhoven -- #5 on that list -- is a Kindleboards author as well!


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

My favorite used to be the one involving the statue of liberty. That's all I recall about it now. LOL


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## luvmy4brats (Nov 9, 2008)

I have several of them on my Kindle for the BRATs.. The format is perfect for the Kindle.


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## aaronpolson (Apr 4, 2010)

I loved them! But I think I only "read" (and owned) two different adventures--one in space and the other in a medieval setting.  What fun--I'm going to have to try one on the Kindle.


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## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

The one I just read was about exploring some alien planet. It was hilarious....especially the choice that led to instant death with a ray gun!


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

about 10 years ago, I managed to track down all of the D&D related ones for about $2 apiece, and they now proudly reside on a shelf with my D&D , and AD&D rulebooks. (yes, I did go back and reread all of them.. GOD I loved those books as a kid!


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

matt youngmark said:


> Saw your post and had to smile. I loved them so much I wrote my own!


And Matt's Zombocalypse if Freakin' AWESOME. I loved reading it, AND it was even funnier because DS#1 read it on his Kindle the same weekend, and at dinner with close friends one night (yes they are used to our weirdness and keep coming back) I asked him how he liked it, and he literally went on and on and on about it for 45 minutes! We were all sorta snickering at how excited and animated he was about it. (he's 19 and reads allll of the time. )


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## hs (Feb 15, 2011)

I had a set of the first 20 books when I was younger and recently handed them over to my son. He's now into them and also reads the new Choose Your Adventure spin-offs too. CYOA lives!


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## matt youngmark (Jan 11, 2011)

BTackitt said:


> And Matt's Zombocalypse if Freakin' AWESOME. I loved reading it, AND it was even funnier because DS#1 read it on his Kindle the same weekend, and at dinner with close friends one night (yes they are used to our weirdness and keep coming back) I asked him how he liked it, and he literally went on and on and on about it for 45 minutes! We were all sorta snickering at how excited and animated he was about it. (he's 19 and reads allll of the time. )


Thanks so much for your kind words. I'm glad you and your son both got a kick out of it! The next book in the series will be out this summer -- hope he likes superheroes, too!


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

Patrick Skelton said:


> So I broke out a box of old Choose Your Own Adventure books the other night. Oh what fun....but oh so stressful reading these things! So many decisions! Anyone else read these books in junior high as well?


I loved them, and I hated them.

It was like reading several books in one. However, I think I am just too OCD. I would have to read them over and over, choosing different directions every time, because I just couldn't stand not knowing every single path. Then, I would worry about which one was the "correct" path and ending. Had I chosen correctly?

Yep. Way too OCD.


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## Kimberly Van Meter (Apr 22, 2011)

OMG! I loved those books! For a Libra (such as myself) a Choose Your Own Adventure book is perfect because I don't truly have to make a decision. I always dog eared the decision pages so I could go back and make a different choice later. LOL...good stuff.

Thanks for the cool memory!

Kimberly V.


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## Keair (Apr 18, 2011)

Hahahaha! Yes! When R.L. Stein and his Goosebump books were all the rage I was between the ages of about 8-10. I discovered Stephen King at ten and I grew up watching horror movies so Goosebump books were very childish to my little brain but I LOVED the "Reader Beware, You Choose the Scare" series of the books and at one time I owned all of them. We used to read them in class and have like a democratic vote on which way to go. I remember writing down what way I went and when I came to the ending I would go back and do another move until I read all possibilities. I loved it!


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## Marc Johnson (Feb 25, 2011)

Loved them! I always made it out alive but would backtrack just to see what would happen. Must have been where I got my love from alternate history/parallel Earths. I also loved reading Stories from Wayside School.


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## Marcin Wrona (Apr 28, 2011)

I liked CYOA, for sure, but I _loved_ the Fighting Fantasy books. For the uninitiated, they were somewhere between CYOA and Dungeons and Dragons - you had a character sheet, with health and combat scores that could be depleted if you got on the wrong side of a manticore or what have you, magic items to use, etc.

Bloody hard, too, some of them, particularly since you could make the right decisions but still get randomed out in combat by an unlucky roll of the dice. (Of course, everyone just cheated).


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## jason10mm (Apr 7, 2009)

The fighting fantasy books, well, at least warlock of firetop mountain, is available for iPhones, and I think is on the kindle as well.

I liked the TSR dnd themed ones the best, well, those and the time travel ones, that series had ninjas, pirates, and knights, basically literary crack to a young boy!


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## A. S. Warwick (Jan 14, 2011)

I used to read them all the time in primary school - and progressed onto the fighting fantasy ones in high school.


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## BrentNichols (Mar 18, 2011)

I got on board early with "The Cave of Time" and kept right on going.  There was a series of "Interplanetary Spy" books too.  Those were a bit more linear.  Make the right choice and keep reading.  Make the wrong choice and perish.  I think video games may have significantly dented the market, though.


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## kaotickitten (Jan 9, 2011)

I would read them all the time.  Go back and choose diffrently, then when I felt I had made every choice possible, I would sometimes go back and read the book cover to cover.  Yeah I know not suppost to do that, but I wanted to make sure not a page went unread.  Now that had to be my ocd showin up lol.


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## Ameleg (Mar 26, 2011)

I cheated constantly on these. For me finding the most bizzarre and gruesome death for the characters was the best reward.


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## jason10mm (Apr 7, 2009)

BrentNichols said:


> I got on board early with "The Cave of Time" and kept right on going. There was a series of "Interplanetary Spy" books too. Those were a bit more linear. Make the right choice and keep reading. Make the wrong choice and perish. I think video games may have significantly dented the market, though.


Oh man, I remember Interplanetary Spy! One of those had a ship shaped like a mobius strip and included a page you could cut out and make it yourself, right? I seem to recall another one where you got a glove grafted to your hand that had all sorts of cool abilities. Funny how popular that type of book was at the time and now they are all but gone. Wonder if my folks felt about them like the way I look at the silly stuff kids love today.


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## NapCat (retired) (Jan 17, 2011)

I have several of these in the Kindle format......perfect.....no flipping through pages.  Lots of fun for all ages !


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## jherrick (Apr 1, 2011)

Really enjoyed them. In 4th grade, we had to write our own story and sew it together into a literal book for a class project. I wrote a choose-your-own-adventure knock-off.


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

jason10mm said:


> The fighting fantasy books, well, at least warlock of firetop mountain, is available for iPhones, and I think is on the kindle as well.


Really Now I love my Kindle even more!

Over here in the UK Fighting Fantasy was always more popular than CYOA... I devoured them as a boy.

Now if somebody could get Lone Wolf and Grail Quest onto the Kindle I may have a joygasm.


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## Grady Hendrix (Sep 8, 2010)

Those books were great, although I really hated the new covers they got when they were reissued. I loved the old covers that smelled like corduroy and yellow shag carpet and the early 80's. I did a long piece about the series and the falling out between the creators (R.A. Montgomery and Edward Packard) over at Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2282786/

There's also a treasure trove of links to interviews with those guys and pieces on the series here:

http://www.gradyhendrix.com/choose-your-own-blog-post/

One of the best is Sean Michael Robinson's essay which includes a ridiculously morbid and funny gallery of "The End" illustrated pages where You, the reader, make choices that lead to your death:

http://hoodedutilitarian.com/2010/09/9447/


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

The writer of the Lone Wolf series licensed the books in 1999 to be distributed for free online. No need to wait for Kindle.
http://www.metafilter.com/95200/Lone-Wolf-chooseyourownadventure-series


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## docnoir (Jan 21, 2011)

BrentNichols said:


> I got on board early with "The Cave of Time" and kept right on going. There was a series of "Interplanetary Spy" books too. Those were a bit more linear. Make the right choice and keep reading. Make the wrong choice and perish. I think video games may have significantly dented the market, though.


Oh, yeah, INTERPLANETARY SPY! I loved those. Wow, I died so many horrible deaths in those books when I was a kid...


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## Averydebow (Jan 20, 2011)

I had one.  I don't know why I didn't have more, because I loved the thing.  All I can remember about it now is a phoenix, maybe a cyclops, and a whirling dervish that always killed me.  I was terrible at it.  Maybe that's why I never got any others; I never was able to "win" the first one.


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## chriswimpress (Mar 22, 2011)

I will always remember The Mystery of Chimney Rock. I read it when I was 9 and I found it terrifying!

http://www.gamebooks.org/show_item.php?id=561

Also the mystery of UFO 54-40 which was creepy in a different way.

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-54-40-Choose-Your-Adventure/dp/0553231758


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## matt youngmark (Jan 11, 2011)

chriswimpress said:


> Also the mystery of UFO 54-40 which was creepy in a different way.
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Inside-54-40-Choose-Your-Adventure/dp/0553231758


That was the one that had a secret ending, which you couldn't reach by following any path in the book. You had to cheat, and discover it by flipping through random pages. Awesome!


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## Zackery Arbela (Jan 31, 2011)

Anyone remember in which you ended up traveling to a planet with vampires that fed off an actual ocean of blood?


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## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

I loved those books, and now my son reads them.  The day the scholastic book order came in at school was always a favorite.  I'd stare at that box on the teacher's desk all day until she finally opened it and passed them out.  It's the little things.


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## brianrowe (Mar 10, 2011)

Oh my God those were the BEST! Although it was a little bit disconcerting at age eight and nine to constantly make the wrong decision and find my character dying by falling into a hole in the Earth! You know what'd be really cool? If there was an ADULT version of these books released today. What if Stephen King wrote one? How could would that be?!?


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## William BK. (Mar 8, 2011)

Yeah, those were awesome, and not just the CYOA, but Lone Wolf, Fighting Fantasy, Fabled Lands, and others.

I have a file on my mac filled with PDFs of various series that I go back to and reread every few months. Great to hear some of these are being released for Kindle--may just have to purchase some for old times' sake.

Matt's Zombocalypse Now looks great!


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## Eltanin Publishing (Mar 24, 2011)

I just noticed that these books are now available in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library (for Prime members). Sweet! A great example of something I probably wouldn't pay money for, but wouldn't mind reading once or twice a year.


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## Darlene Jones (Nov 1, 2011)

My kids loved those books in the day. I bet kids still would.


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## Brad Murgen (Oct 17, 2011)

Zackery Arbela said:


> Anyone remember in which you ended up traveling to a planet with vampires that fed off an actual ocean of blood?


This one? Space Vampire?

http://www.amazon.com/Space-Vampire-Choose-Your-Adventure/dp/055326723X

I did the Lone Wolf and Grail Quest ones, they were awesome. Used to get them in grade school through the Scholastic book order... ah, memories.

Anyone ever use the Combat Heroes ones by Joe Dever? Each page was a first-person perspective of a dungeon, and you moved around by going to different pages. If you had the companion book, your friend would be in the same dungeon and you would make your moves and be able to find each other in the book. It was really cool.

http://homepages.tesco.net/~parsonsp/html/combat_heroes.html


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## Mark_A_Lopez (Oct 24, 2010)

Oddly enough, these books were the first things to chip away at my innocence. As a child, I always imagined that I was destined for great things: fame, riches, late nights spent protecting the city as a certain wall crawling vigilante. But when I read choose your own adventures, I almost always ended up facing premature demise. How, I would think, could I not save the day on the first read through?

Thanks for reminding me of those good ol' days


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## flipside (Dec 7, 2011)

As a kid, read different kinds, not just the "Choose Your Own Adventure" Brand.

Nintendo had one for Mario Bros. for example...

And there was this gaming line where you even kept track of hit points, items, etc.

Fighting Fantasy line got re-released a few years back...


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## caseyf6 (Mar 28, 2010)

I love these books...


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

They were fun, especially for people who liked playing role playing games, and couldn't find an RPG group. How do you use them on the Kindle? Do they use hyperlinks?


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## StephenLivingston (May 10, 2011)

I loved the fighting fantasy books too.  My favourite was Deathtrap Dungeon.
Best wishes, Stephen Livingston.


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## Eltanin Publishing (Mar 24, 2011)

QuantumIguana said:


> They were fun, especially for people who liked playing role playing games, and couldn't find an RPG group. How do you use them on the Kindle? Do they use hyperlinks?


Yes, they have hyperlinks, and then you can use the "back" button to get back where you were to try something else (unless you've gone off and done other things on your kindle, so sometimes I'd set a bookmark).


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## Seanathin23 (Jul 24, 2011)

I loved those as a kid. Really want to write a few at some point.


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## jmoralee (Sep 6, 2011)

I used to read hundreds of Choose Your Own adventure books - ranging from the Fighting Fantasy ones and Joe Dever books to ones like Falcon, which featured a time-travelling cop and a sentient computer.  I thought that series was excellent because it didn't involve throwing dice and keeping an inventory of objects "picked up", but it suddenly stopped after about the seventh book.

Did anyone else read those books or am I the only one?


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## E.N. Gallant (Dec 16, 2011)

The Mona Lisa is Missing! was my favorite one.

How creatively groundbreaking was the author who wrote it? Your character's accomplice in Paris is named Pierre.


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## Nancy Fulda (Apr 24, 2011)

Aw man, that brings back memories.  I read my copy of THE BADLANDS OF HARK so many times the pages started falling out of the bindings.


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## C.A.Wodensen (Dec 3, 2011)

I remember those books, but my faves were always the Fighting Fantasy series.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

matt youngmark said:


> Saw your post and had to smile. I loved them so much I wrote my own!
> 
> I think my all time favorite from the original series, though, is "War with the Evil power Master." Because anyone who calls himself "The Evil Power Master" is a dude who knows what he stands for.


LOL! That could be the sobriequet of several of my former bosses

My favorite CYOA was the one set in Elizabethan England--even as a child, I was obsessed with the 17th century. I remember being creeped out by the description of Queen Elizabeth with her pale make-up and bright red hair, and anything that creeps me out is a good story.


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## brianrowe (Mar 10, 2011)

It was pretty traumatic when you died. And sometimes you even died in pretty horrific ways! I remember one decision leading me to being electrocuted in a bathtub! Pretty scary for a ten-year-old!


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## James Conway (Jul 7, 2011)

If you are talking about the books where you are asked to make a choice and if your choice is A you continue reading on pg 79 and if your choice is B you continue reading on page 100 then the answer is yes. Those were a hoot.


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## Chris Strange (Apr 4, 2011)

Hell yeah. I used to cheat like crazy when I read those. I'd have so many fingers holding points from previous decisions I could barely turn the pages.


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## Brad Murgen (Oct 17, 2011)

Nancy Fulda said:


> Aw man, that brings back memories. I read my copy of THE BADLANDS OF HARK so many times the pages started falling out of the bindings.


Badlands of Hark was a classic one. It was actually pretty tough to get to the end of that one. At least I remember having the most trouble surviving in that one vs. other game books.


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## DH_Sayer (Dec 20, 2011)

Totally loved them. My favorite was the Cave of Time, the first one I believe. Earlier this year I was checking to see if any were on the Kindle store and they only had a few and they seemed to be the newer ones, which I have as much interest in as I do new CG Transformers shows. I want the old, old stuff, the best stuff. This is a tangent I know, but did anyone read the Lone Wolf series? LOVED that as well.


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## Brad Murgen (Oct 17, 2011)

DH_Sayer said:


> This is a tangent I know, but did anyone read the Lone Wolf series? LOVED that as well.


I had about 7 of the Lone Wolf books. Those and Grail Quest were very fun.


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## DH_Sayer (Dec 20, 2011)

Brad Murgen said:


> I had about 7 of the Lone Wolf books. Those and Grail Quest were very fun.


I had most of the initial batch of 12, I think. My favorite was the first one I read--actually the 2nd in the series--Fire on the Water. I read it over and over, wearing out the stats sheets in the book, constantly erasing the boxes. It was fantastic. I wonder why it seemed to disappear.


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## Colin Taber (Apr 4, 2011)

I used to love these!

When I was young, I used to get most of my books from the library, but I think the first book series I actually went out to buy with my meagre pocket money was the D&D pick your path to adventure series (unconnected titles).


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## Guest (Dec 24, 2011)

Oh how cool! I remember these. Hmm...I might need to get one lol


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## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

wow!  I see this thread I started last year is up and alive again!  Long live Choose Your Own Adventure!


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## stacyjuba (Jul 12, 2010)

I was happy as my daughter received a set of American Girl books for Christmas that look to be in the vein of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. The series is called Innerstar University. Not sure if they are on Kindle though, but I was glad they still have those kinds of books!


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## Nicholas Andrews (Sep 8, 2011)

I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was about eleven or so. I even had one of the Dungeons & Dragons based ones in my library. There are so many of those and other YA books I put in closet storage once I got older and started putting more adult books on display in my room. Then when I moved out on my own, all those old books got thrown out. I wish I had them back now. I would love to go back and relive them.

For a long time, I wanted to write a CYOA story based on my PPV Squad characters for the Internet, where instead of turning to a certain page you clicked through a series of web pages. Unfortunately, I never got around to it.


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## Brad Murgen (Oct 17, 2011)

DH_Sayer said:


> I had most of the initial batch of 12, I think. My favorite was the first one I read--actually the 2nd in the series--Fire on the Water. I read it over and over, wearing out the stats sheets in the book, constantly erasing the boxes. It was fantastic. I wonder why it seemed to disappear.


Haha yeah, I remember having to make my own stat sheets which I photocopied. I had Fire on the Water. My favorite was The Chasm of Doom... I never got all the books, I don't remember why. I still have them, they are great.


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## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

Anyone here recall the Choose Your Own Adventure series written for the gals?

Hilarious!


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## acellis (Oct 10, 2011)

I did read these books! Hadn't thought of them in years. What great fun.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

The Choose Your Own Adventure books were great. I couldn't get enough of them as a kid. Heck there's one or two I still quote ("Welcome to the slave pits of Hom.") and most of the time nobody has any idea what I'm talking about. 

Maybe it's just my sick sense of humor, but I have to admit I love the raunchy mockeries of them that some websites (imockery and cracked come to mind) put up. They're sick, hilarious, and nostalgic all at once.


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## Neil Ostroff (Mar 25, 2011)

Ha! Ha! I just found an old book of them and was paging through. What a blast from the past.


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## Z.R. (Feb 13, 2012)

My local library had a large stock of them, and I am fairly sure I read them all (repeatedly). I loved them. But oh so disappointing when you made the wrong choice and died.


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## DH_Sayer (Dec 20, 2011)

Just noticed that the Kindle store has the first couple Lone Wolf books available as active content. It did take my kindle a while to calm down after reading them--it caused slower page turns and got really sluggish...which is unfortunately not the best endorsement for it... The books are great though!


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## Joseph_Evans (Jul 24, 2011)

The Fighting Fantasy series by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone was amazing, as was the Give Yourself Goosebumps ones!


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## Jackal Lantern Books (Aug 30, 2011)

I haven't thought about choose your own adventure books in years! Totally loved them when I was about 13/14 years old. Thrilled that they are still making them and I will have to turn some of my younger reader friends onto them. It was always so exciting to feel like I got to have a say in what happened next! Almost like reading a video game, now that I think about it.


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## Ras Ashcroft (Feb 8, 2012)

They had tons of those in my school library.

The first one I read though was the neighbour kid's copy of the Super Mario choose your own adventure book. Those Mario bros sure go through some wacky adventures!


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## matt youngmark (Jan 11, 2011)

The official CYOA twitter account now follows me! They retweeted a couple of my tweets, and it absolutely thrilled me to death. (I have a secret hope that if I make a splash with the Chooseomatic series I'll be able to fulfill a lifelong dream and write one for them)


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## joshtremino (Jul 31, 2010)

Those were cool


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## NeroAZ (Aug 27, 2010)

I cannot remember even one of them at the moment, but I read any and all I could get hold of when I was a kid.  my local library had them and they are what got me interested in reading.


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## soyfrank (Feb 2, 2011)

Hands down, those were my favorite books when I was a kid. Thanks for posting the link. I'm going to have to check them out again


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## B.A. Spangler (Jan 25, 2012)

Just posted about the series in another thread ... fond, very fond memories. 

I remember having a stack of the first sixty or so and would spend hours upon hours reading them. What an absolutely awesome series.


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