If you are looking for an entertaining “coming-of-age” story with plenty of crazy adventures, implausible characters, hot bitchy women, and gripping stories of what it means to take a flimsy little raft straight into the teeth of some of the scariest navigable waterways on Earth, you would be hard-pressed to do much better than Adam Piggot’s book.

I stumbled across his blog the other day while noodling around teh internetz and saw that he had done almost as good a job of shanking that ridiculous vaginal discharge by one Brian Lombardi from Pravda The New York Times as The Mountain Who Writes did, back in the day. Impressed with his rather unusually fluent and eloquent writing style, I decided to give his book a shot- hey, it was free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, so what the hell, why not.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a very well-written, well-edited, tightly narrated, and exceptionally engaging book crafted by a man who clearly knows how to tell a great story.

Adam Piggott may have a funny-sounding name, but there is nothing funny about what he has been through in his life. And he has been through a lot. His book starts out with him chasing a girl that he barely knows but is madly in twoo wove with, clear across the entire continent of Australia. On a rickety bike. Across the Australian Outback.

In case you don’t know anything about Australia, let me summarise it for you very quickly: EVERYTHING THERE WANTS TO KILL YOU AND USE YOUR EYEBALLS FOR GOBSTOPPERS. Why the hell do you think I left that nightmare land of hyper-aggressive killer spiders and snakes that could kill you a thousand times over and homicidal kangaroos just as soon as I was goddamn able to?!

But his story doesn’t end when he gets to Sydney and finds his lady love- oh no. It’s just getting started.

What follows is a rollicking series of misadventures across some of the toughest river terrain in the world, as young Mr. Piggott rapidly grows up from a callow, wet-behind-the-ears yoof, and into a seasoned and experienced river guide. Tales of wine, women, and song follow- and I have to say, considering the debauchery he got up to during his life, he does a rather good job of preserving the modesty (more or less) of most of the women he encountered during his younger days.

All told, this is a fun book that is well worth reading. Actually, when I finished reading it today, I got the feeling that Mr. Piggott had left quite a few stories untold- but then, like any skilled storyteller, he knows not to give away all the secrets all at once.

So if you’re looking for a quick, fun read that will nevertheless get you thinking and wondering about the many lessons that life teaches us, so often so brutally at so many different turning points, this may well be the book for you.