Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

I'm NEW to "choose-your-own-adventure" books! I read my first one this year, My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel, and I LOVED it, so I look forward to seeing everyone's recommendations for this category. The first thing that pops into my head is Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography by Neil Patrick Harris.


Of course, Listopia has got us covered:
Adult Choose Your Own Adventure Books
Modern Choose Your Own Adventure Books

I got Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure for Christmas last year and haven't read it yet, so it's going to be perfect for this!

Personally, I couldn't stand these as a kid, so if I do this I'm going to stretch the boundaries of the category just a little by reading Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure book in that the reader is encouraged to jump from chapter-to-chapter rather than necessarily reading the book in sequence.

I have Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure sitting on my shelf, so this is a perfect fit!

A slightly different spin: Jane, Unlimited would work for this. Though the reader isn't choosing the adventure, the primary character, Jane, is. The book follows different plot lines as Jane makes different choices at varying points in the timeline of the story.

Nullifidian wrote: "Personally, I couldn't stand these as a kid, so if I do this I'm going to stretch the boundaries of the category just a little by reading Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar. It..."

I tried reading that for a book club earlier this year. I think one person (and not the one who chose the book, who was very apologetic) managed to slog through it. I said I'd keep trying, but.... There are people who liked it, though, so I hope you'll be one of them. :-)

Last year I read Meanwhile and quite liked it. It's in a comic book format and quick to read.

I might just go with the nostalgic option and read one of the classic choose your own adventure books I loved as a kid. I wonder if I can find Indiana Jones and the Gold of Genghis Khan in my library system...

Nadine wrote: "I'm NEW to "choose-your-own-adventure" books! I read my first one this year, My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel, and I LOVED it..."

I have to try this. Your review cracked me up, and yes I peeked at the spoiler LOL.

I remember my brother had a bunch of these when we were kids and I used to read them but if it wasn't for the challenge I wouldn't be doing this again now.

I'm considering Choose Your Own Disaster.

I saw this challenge and just assumed we had to read a childrens book cause I have never heard of this being done for adults. I AM SO EXCITED!

I'm going to do My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel.

I loved these when I was a young teenager so I have ordered the The Shamutanti Hills, first of the Sorcery series by Steve Jackson which I loved when they first came out ( an old second-hand copy). I am looking forward to the nostalgia.

I think I might do My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel

Honestly this prompt doesn't excite me much, but I'm going to try and give it a chance!

Kelsey wrote: "I saw this challenge and just assumed we had to read a childrens book cause I have never heard of this being done for adults. I AM SO EXCITED!

I'm going to do [book:My Lady's Choosing..."Jenny (juliababyjen) | 52 comments I think I might do My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel

Jenny wrote: "Honestly this prompt doesn't excite me much, but I'm going to try and give it a chance! "

Well at least we can all compare our adventures LOL

I'm planning to read To Be or Not To Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure by Ryan North for this one. BUT Neil Patrick Harris' autobiography, Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography (aptly titled!), is written in a choose-your-own-adventure format, and will work for this!

I've already read My Lady's Choosing and I'm not that interested in Neil Patrick Harris, so I'll have to have a dig around to see what's easily available in the UK.

"Master Your Destiny" is a children´s choose-your-own-adventure series by Adam Blade.
The Dark Cauldron etc.

Some of these have already been mentioned, but this article made me a bit more excited about the prompt:
https://www.bustle.com/p/10-choose-yo...

Do they work quite well in ebook format? I see there is a big difference in ebook and paperback prices and some of them are in Kindle Unlimited (for those who have it).

Ellie wrote: "Some of these have already been mentioned, but this article made me a bit more excited about the prompt:
https://www.bustle.com/p/10-choose-yo...-..."

I would guess it would depend on how carefully they formatted the e-book. I've read some comics that were amazing on Kindle, with a really easy way to zoom in and switch between panels, and some that were just scanned in pages and really hard to read. If they bothered to make the 'turn to page...' lines into links then it should work great on Kindle.

I read My Ladys Choosing as an ebook, borrowed thrugh overdrive on ipad. That worked quite well.

Ellie - the only "choose your own" book I've ever read (My Lady's Choosing) was an ebook, and I can't imagine reading it any other way now!! With hyperlinks it was perfect to jump to the next choice, and easy to go back to the beginning too. A few times when I knew I'd want to try both choices, I bookmarked the page and it was easy to go back to it. I'll be reading an ebook for the Challenge he next year too.

I'm even more excited for this prompt after reading all these suggestions. I haven't read a choose-your-own since I was a kid, and I wouldn't have even thought there would be many choices for an adult version.

I've had Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography on my shelf for ages now, but I think I'm going to go with My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel too!

Nadine wrote: "Ellie - the only "choose your own" book I've ever read (My Lady's Choosing) was an ebook, and I can't imagine reading it any other way now!! With hyperlinks it was perfect to jump to the next choic..."

Your comment about bookmarking brings back memories of when I was a kid and I would end up with nearly all my fingers inside the choose your own adventure book, marking different places I wanted to go back to. :-D

I found an oldie wedged in the back of my bookshelf, a true choose your own adventure classic from 1986:
Dungeon of Dread.

I used to really love "Choose Your Own Adventure" books as a kid, so maybe this is an opportunity to revisit them. Our library has quite a few, including, weirdly, an '80s Transformers CYOA book, The Invisibility Factor. Maybe I'll read that one, since I'm an '80s nerd and there's really very little Transformers literature out there.

Alisia wrote: "I have Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure sitting on my shelf, so this is a perfect fit!
I read this and I think it is the most unfunny, uninspiring and boring misuse of Austen's work.
But I think this is a fun genre, so I will give a chance to another book for this prompt.

Funny story: Many years ago I was at a writer's conference and when the session was opened for comment someone made a comment about the reader controlling the story. I reminded them of choose your own adventure books and had to describe how they worked. The presenter- in a very uptight and prissy way said, "I can't see how that would ever be successful." I couldn't believe it. Where was she when we were all kids?

I might try one of the classic choose your own adventure, where you have dice, an analog inventory list etc. and do it with my three sons, they love board games, card games, and Warhammer, so I think I can convince them. I have the Danish edition of 'the Warlock of fire mountain' on my shelf from my childhood.

These were really big when I was in 5th grade (?) I think. I didn't really care for them all that much. I remember my mom or my grandmother gave me a bunch of them for Christmas one year. We had to read on our own for school and everyone in my class was reading these. I never got the appeal (probably because I always ended up dying). But, I can put up with one. Maybe my decision making skills have improved over the years and I'll come out alive this time!

Wow, first I googled this challenge... "choose your own adventure"??? ok I obiously never crossed one of those. Maybe they aren't that big of a deal in Germany. Well, Wikipedia got me covered. There are quite a few of them available here. So I'm exited to discover this - at least to me - all new book type .

Question for Nadine regarding My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel....


How did you decide when to stop reading??? I feel like one round isn't enough. I wonder how many possible scenarios there are?

I remember when I was younger reading my older brothers choose your own adventures and I would get so pissed if I died after my first choice. It always seemed like they were too short LOL.

Tracy wrote: "Question for Nadine regarding My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel....


How did you decide when to stop reading??? I feel like one round isn't enough. I wonder how many..."

I think I did five or six rounds. I meant to get back to it and read more, but had to set it down, and the next day I was more interested in another book, and soon enough my library loan expired and the ebook disappeared from my device. Problem solved :-)

Katy wrote: "These were really big when I was in 5th grade (?) I think. I didn't really care for them all that much. I remember my mom or my grandmother gave me a bunch of them for Christmas one year. We had to..."

That is actually my main objections to choose-your-own-adventure books (at least the ones from my childhood)--your decision making skills have very little to do with how well your story ends. Turn left in this tunnel and you die, turn right and you find a chest of gold and live happily ever after... No way to really know, which is why I would try several times and see what a bunch of the different endings were.

I did an internet search to find an adult Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, hoping to find one that was interesting, and I found this one:

If: A Novel, Nicolas Bourbaki (your choices affect the literary style of the book as well as the plot).

But, I was having trouble finding it on Goodreads, so I tried a search of the author's name and found out this (if this is the same author):

Nicolas Bourbaki is the collective pseudonym under which a group of (mainly French) 20th-century mathematicians wrote a series of books presenting an exposition of modern advanced mathematics, beginning in 1935. With the goal of founding all of mathematics on set theory, the group strove for rigour and generality. Their work led to the discovery of several concepts and terminologies still discussed.
Bourbaki congress, 1938.

But, I might just go with this one. It sounds right up my alley: MURDERED: Can YOU Solve the Mystery?, by James Schannep. A murder mystery seems made for this genre.

I used to read to my kids a serie of choose your adventure book. 50 surprise in the country of ... (dinosaurs, vikings, middle age etc...). I might rerad one of those with my youngest.

Kim wrote: "I did an internet search to find an adult Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, hoping to find one that was interesting, and I found this one:

If: A Novel, Nicolas Bourbaki (your choices affect the lit..."

That's the name in the Twenty-one Pilots song!!!! My daughter had looked it up and told me it was the name of some group of mathematicians, so we decided that's who "Nico and the Niners" are.

He'll always try to stop me, that Nicholas Bourbaki
He's got no friends close but those who know him most know
He goes by Nico, he told me I'm a copy
When I'd hear him mock me that's almost stopped me
Well we're surrounded and we're hounded
There's no above or a secret door
What are we here for?
If not to run straight through all our tormentors?
But until that time I'll try and sing this

yes I get all fangirlly about this group :-)

There's a BOOK? what a coincidence! It's definitely not written by the mathematicians. I wonder if the band knew about the book.

Nadine wrote: "Kim wrote: "I did an internet search to find an adult Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, hoping to find one that was interesting, and I found this one:

If: A Novel, Nicolas Bourbaki (your choices af..."

I love this! Let's try to find it, OK? (And I'll go over to YouTube to look for that song).

ETA: Just looked it up on Amazon, and it's going for $171 in paperback, but you can get it on Kindle for $6.95! LOL!

So how many different adventure paths in your choice here are you all making yourself read before you consider your book here "read"? xD

Stacey wrote: "So how many different adventure paths in your choice here are you all making yourself read before you consider your book here "read"? xD"

It honestly depends how fun the book is. I enjoyed the first path I followed in My Lady's Choosing, but the second one was a bit lack-lustre so I called it a day after two.

If I died straight away I wouldn't count that as a read through. I definitely don't think you need to read all the possible endings, maybe two is enough to get the feeling that it's a multi-thread story.

Stacey wrote: "So how many different adventure paths in your choice here are you all making yourself read before you consider your book here "read"? xD"

I think it depends on the nature of the choose-your-own-adventure book, and then it´s up to you. I read "my lady´s choosing" three times I think (the last time was a skimread). The old ones in the "Fighting Fantasy" series (The Warlock of Firetop Mountain fx), I wouldn´t read/ play through more than once (unless you die quickly), they are quite eloborate.

Stacey wrote: "So how many different adventure paths in your choice here are you all making yourself read before you consider your book here "read"? xD"

Just one for me. If the book is fun, I'll run through a few more, but once I've read one, it counts.

Kim wrote: "Nadine wrote: "Kim wrote: "I did an internet search to find an adult Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, hoping to find one that was interesting, and I found this one:

If: A Novel, Nicolas Bourbaki (..."

LOL I'm thinking about it!!!!

The song is "Morph" by the way - one of my favorites on their new album.

It's such a subjective thing that I'm just wondering what everyone else will choose to do! :)

I've also read My Lady's Choosing and read 4 different endings if memory serves but also didn't even find out who 1 of the characters was so I definitely didn't get everything out of it that I could have but in that particular instance I wasn't worried about doing so because I wasn't a huge fan of the instalove! xD

Ok, maybe I'm the only here that does this. When I read a choose your own adventure, I go through once just choosing whatever I want to. Then I go through and make a diagram so I can track down all possible endings of the story. I end up reading literally every page in the book. That's when I'm 'done'. Just me?

Jackie wrote: "Ok, maybe I'm the only here that does this. When I read a choose your own adventure, I go through once just choosing whatever I want to. Then I go through and make a diagram so I can track down all..."

This will be my first time reading one as an adult and I have a sneaking suspicion this will very well be me too lol.

Jackie wrote: "Ok, maybe I'm the only here that does this. When I read a choose your own adventure, I go through once just choosing whatever I want to. Then I go through and make a diagram so I can track down all..."

Do you happen to have a photo of one of those diagrams? I'm very curious how you structure that!?! :)

Stacey wrote: " Do you happen to have a photo of one of those diagrams? I'm very curious how you structure that!?! :) "

I was thinking the same thing. How exactly do you map that out??

Tracy wrote: "Stacey wrote: " Do you happen to have a photo of one of those diagrams? I'm very curious how you structure that!?! :) "

I was thinking the same thing. How exactly do you map that out??"

My brain immediately thinks of "family tree style" but I don't think there's a piece of paper big enough for that....need a massive whiteboard and very small writing?!? xD

I'm worried this prompt may ruin me!

I keep seeing Million Little Mistakes at Barnes & Noble and debating on whether to pick it up. I'll probably finally get to it with this prompt.