Usually, I'm not too big on books or reading. Yet with tons (a.k.a. too much) time on my hands due to lack of work at my job it is something I can't stop doing.

Anyway, I saw these books at Wal Mart about a week or two ago and I took the plunge tonight with the first book and wow; while these are obviously aimed at a younger audience (the 150+ pages are insanely easy to decimate for older folks) it honestly made me reflect on all the crazy crap I did when I was in Jr. High and Middle school. Hell, I even got my mother (a 50 year old) to start reading the thing. This is no small task by any means, every other book I've tried to indroduce her to has resulted in a no-go despite her love of reading - even when it's classic.

A lot of the charm really comes from the simple, comic-book like illustrations that illustrate and enact the situations described within. Still, the only bad thing is when you fly through the book that $11 seems kind of steep, but in general sense books aren't cheap to begin with.

Hopefully, I can pick up the other two minus the "fill-in-the-blank" one (which plays out more like a Mad Libs) before I go broke buying books, and there is another one coming out soon.

But anyway, has anyone else checked these books out?

I really liked the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books when i was younger.

And the 'Encyclopedia Brown' series too.

The funny thing is that i don't read books at all, anymore. I guess i was a somewhat different person back in those days....

Ditto, I'd put a finger in each page when you'd have a choice to make, read each of the outcomes (and their further branches) and work my way back up the branches when they led to the "bad endings" so that I could take all possible routes.

While I can't remember a damn thing about their contents, I thought the concept kicked ass.

Maybe you can find some old copies of the books on ebay for cheap?