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:
“Even with a map, there’s no way to find
out what really comes next without making a choice and flipping to another
page.”
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.
ReplyDeleteBut 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!"