I used to love these books as a kid. I got really proficient at using multiple fingers to manage all my "Save States" while I was going through the adventure.

As an adult I spent a lot of time thinking about how I seem to have the same rough success ratio at making life decisions as I did when I was a child reading choose-your-own-adventure books.

I've begun a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story that's more a philosophical argument (or art?). There are a lot of paths through the story but they all converge to the same ending.

It's something I have believed and have especially reflected on when my mother died a couple years ago. I have wondered for some time whether she could have been happier had "x" happened instead of "y".

She had such a bad childhood that I contemplated what it would be like to clone her and raised her as my daughter. How different might her life be if she had a healthy, happy family.

But I keep coming to the conclusion that she was an inherently unhappy person and, that while plenty of life-events may have made things worse for her, in the end I think perhaps she was "fated" to be unhappy after all.

So the idea was a "Choose your own adventure" where you more or less end up in the same place regardless. Maybe a bit wealthier, maybe with 2 instead of 3 kids — but the fundamentals were already "cast".

(And anyway, upon further reflection I came to see how much my oldest daughter is more or less my mom. We raised her as best we can and yet shades of my mom's "genetics" are clearly there.)

In 2022 the New Yorker wrote up the CYOA franchise, early history and later existence, in a story that is a choose your own adventure itself: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/19/the-enduring-a...

The ending the sticks with me the most is is Inside UFO 54-40. There's a specific ending you cannot reach by following the instructions. You have to "hack" the book and turn to the page directly.