Beau Miles

The Backyard Adventurer is a quirky and unique account of a seemingly extraordinarily normal Aussie bloke who makes stuff in his backyard, calls himself a d*ck, and hates blackberries. The book basically reads itself; it felt as if I’d reached the last page even before I started the book.

My first impressions, and the only review I wrote about this book, was this:

“Probably the best book I’ve read in the past few years. Real, fun, perfectly human, and humanly imperfect in all the ways that matter. This one will stay in my backpack on many journeys to come.”

There are a few typos here and there (the international version might be less raw; I have the original) but they didn’t tear me out of the story. Instead, they felt like a part of the book, a part of Beau, which, after finishing the book or if you know Beau from his videos, might be exactly right. Beau himself said in his video, “It’s a bit like me, which I don’t mind actually, the book is a bit funky.”

The very first printing even missed a few sentences that disappeared behind a photo when the book was formatted. As Beau said in his video when introducing the book, these lines might just be the best lines he’s ever written: “‘Thanks ladies,’ I say. ‘I hope the next bloke who walks through the door has better blood.’ I smile as I walk into the dim light of day, knowing that my life-affirming activity has only made me less than human for a day or so. And I’m fine with that.

In a typical Beau fashion, he also notes that they left us readers a bit of space at the beginning of Chapter 3 to write these lines in ourselves.

The book is as it is: incredibly human. With typos and mistakes, and with more meaningful miles among its pages than perhaps any other book I’ve ever read. It’s also quirky. Who wants to do, write about, or read about eating one’s body weight in nothing but beans?

Well, Beau. And, apparently, me. And, probably, you, if you choose to pick up this account of one man’s life that made him The Backyard Adventurer.