Map to Read a Book!


As a teenager, I read a few Hardy Boys books where at the end of some pages, you’d have a choice: If you want to pursue the crook, go to Page 30. If you want to take the victim to the hospital, go to Page 40. It was interesting at times, and choices at some points may lead you back to pages you had already visited via a different series of choices. But I had never read (nor even knew about) a similar category called the “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. It too had the same forks where the reader makes choices to decide which page to read next.

So what was the difference of this new kind from the type I had read? In the kind I had read, the final outcome was guaranteed: the good guys would win, the crooks would end up behind bars. Only the path to that outcome would vary. Whereas the other kind could have different “types of outcomes at the end of each path”, writes Sarah Laskow. The endings cover the entire spectrum from “great, favorable, mediocre, disappointing, or catastrophic”!

Back then, I used to always wonder whether I had read all the pages as I made my choices. Or had I missed some pages due to the choices I made? How could I keep track of paths already followed? How could I trace back to an earlier decision point?

Turns out nowadays these books have a map!
“Each arrow represents a page, each circle a choice, and each square an ending. Dotted lines show where branches link to one another.”
But the publisher doesn’t want to give too much away. Therefore:
“On the official maps, however, the endings aren’t coded in any way that reveals their nature.”
On the Net though, fans use colors to indicate which type of ending it is! Here’s an example of such a color coded map:

 If you thought that such a map ruins the book, think again. After all:
“Even with a map, there’s no way to find out what really comes next without making a choice and flipping to another page.”

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarFebruary 1, 2019 at 4:37 PM

    Well well well...I had all along imagined that good literature ('books' in our context) reflects life extremely well. We have taken a giant leap forward!!! We have books that are 'actually life' in a way! :-) See, in real life, every fork you take decides on what is going to be your further life. Now, they have brought that detail into books too.

    But then, gimmicks apart, will such mind-benders ever match the depth and profundity that literature offer us? mmm...

    The most confounding bit comes from Zen, transcending all about forks that decide our path along life. If one gets it, one is a Buddha! It goes thus: "As you walk along life, when you come across a fork, take it!"

    ReplyDelete

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