Non-sequential books

Sorry, no, I haven't read or seen any books like those for years and years now. I always enjoyed them, though. They give you so many more hours of reading fun when you can switch things up over and over again.

If I remember right, I think a few of the Animorph books had a sort of choose your own adventure aspects to them.

Well, ChooseCo got the rights to Choose Your Own Adventure and started rereleasing the old novels and releasing new ones too, a few years ago. There have been a few other series with the same gimmick, check out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_your_own_adventure

I read recently that there was talk of bringing this format back on e-readers. But if you say, made the wrong choice, it would play a short video clip of you being killed by a dragon or something.

I think the idea was for a multi-media reading experience. Sort'a like the Skeleton creek series, but with the clips built-in.

Hmm I am not sure if it's the same thing but my neice is big into the 39 Clue books...

don't know about books, but I think video games are moving in that direction. I mean the fantasy/RPG ones. DRAGONAGE: Origins (Xbox 360) lets you play as a bunch of different characters, and all along the way you can choose from three to five different responses to what's happening. Eventually, it all leads you back to certain checkpoints, but you can do things in different orders, and each character approaches certain from a different path. Pretty complex...

And my other son has an app on his iPod called MyQuest or some such that gives you two choices, like Open the Door or Go down the Stairs, and different adventures are in each place.

Not sure of anything recently in this area. I remember the Fighting Fantasy books very fondly from my youth! I recently discovered this: http://www.choiceofgames.com/dragon/ which is charming, I think.

The difficulty with doing books like that these days is probably that kids aren't used to playing pencil/paper/dice games; but it would lend itself perfectly to a smartphone app. Actually, someone needs to get on the phone to the Choose Your Own Adventure / Fighting Fantasy guys and offer to write one using their back catalogue. Hmm...

EDIT: Ah: http://www.fightingfantasy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1763&Itemid=2

Like most of my good ideas, someone had it six months ago...

Back in the day I liked to read the "Give yourself Goosebumps" series, a choose-your-own-adventure strand of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps books. They were pretty bad, the story changing far too quickly in order to give you a "scare" at the end of every page, so you ended up forgetting what had only just happened. Also, due to my obsessive nature, i used to end up holding about eight pages open with my fingers so i could go back and try every eventuality.