As Adrian delved back into the discussion of books having a definite beginning and ending my mind wandered. More specifically it wandered back to the days when I read the dog-eared Doctor Who Make Your Own Adventure Books. Every time I sent K-9 to some morbid robotic demise it was under different circumstances at a different place in the novel. In that sense the book didn’t end where the yellowing pages finished, it could have easily jumped back to section 14. You could bounce between sections, stuck within a cycle of actions that always lead you back to being captured by Daleks. If you were stupid enough to try and escape immediately you would be captured once again. It’s just like when you keep finding yourself back on Slayer’s Wikipedia page due to some convoluted hyperlink trail (A friend told me this happens).
After writing all this I remember that even in this sense the Make Your own Adventure, story itself contains a beginning middle and an end…. the end being your own death.