I used to collect lots of these books and like whimsy says, I also buried my fingers in between pages to see how many paths I could have taken and how I could have avoided getting eaten by a tiger/shark/hippo. Actually, the parts I enjoyed most were making those boneheaded decisions and getting killed. With hindsight, it would seem that these books were rather violent for what's supposed to be a children's series...I mean, how much can a young mind take being eaten by wild animals all the time?
I was more into these books becuase it was easy and there wasn't any need to read a ton of rule books like Dungeons & Dragons.
Anyway, there was also a series of Choose Your Own Adventure games for the old Apple II+ computers which didn't last too long against better known games like Zork and Wizardry.