Book Review: Wonderland Avenue by Danny Sugerman

One of my bookclub girls gave me her favourite book to read - Wonderland Avenue by Danny Sugerman

The book is a biography of a 13 year old Danny Sugerman who became the manager of The Doors in his teens and then lived a drug infused existence until he woke up in a coma at the age of 21.

This book is not just for The Doors fans, although I do have a bit of a thing for rock god Jim Morrison (what girl doesn't?) but this isn't really about the The Doors so much but the story of Danny growing up in a rich but messy divorced home, leaving school and stepping into the 60s rock and roll lifestyle and into a world of escapism and freedom bought on by every drug and booze imaginable.

The first half of this book kept me pretty interested hearing about how The Doors became popular but the latter half just dragged on about the drugs and I started to get a bit bored of it all and was waiting for him to OD and die which is what he was pretty much trying to do.

I give this book 3 stars and would recommend it to teenagers and people living in the fast lane of life - not all the good die young, and in Danny's words once you're dead you're just dead.

An interesting tid bit: Jim Morrison gave Danny some books to read by Charles Bukowski - which was the book I read just before this one Ham on Rye

Jarrah Jungle's Star Rating:

1 Bad - I'd rather eat brussel sprouts topped with anchovies than read this again

2 Not Good - I'd rather watch re-runs of Neighbours than read this again

3 Ok - I'm sitting on the fence - its not great but not terrible either

4 Good - I'd pass up a pack of tim tams for this read

5 Great - I'd pass up a date with Johnny Depp for this read

[Images via Boomerang Books]