#Bookvent – Celebrating my top reads of 2020
My second #bookvent pick for day fourteen is another older title, now six years old in fact as it celebrated its e-book birthday earlier this month. it was one of a handful of Orenda Books titles that I actually hadn’t read – yes they did exist – but I am more than happy that I have now corrected that error as this book really did make an impact. Not my usual crime genre type read, the book did have some stretched links back to organised crime, but more than that it was packed with humour, emotion and nostalgia, How can a book that has you laughing one minute and crying into your cappuccino the next not appear in my bookvent list. It even won one of my coveted (?) Red Hot Reads badges. My second day fourteen pick is …
The Last Days Of Disco by David F. Ross
Early in the decade that taste forgot, Fat Franny Duncan is on top of the world. He is the undoubted King of the Ayrshire Mobile Disco scene, controlling and ruling the competition with an iron fist. But the future is uncertain. A new partnership is coming and is threatening to destroy the big man’s Empire …
Bobby Cassidy and Joey Miller have been best mates since primary school. Joey is an idealist; Bobby just wants to get laid and avoid following his brother Gary to the Falklands. A partnership in their new mobile disco venture seems like the answer to everything.
The Last Days of Disco is about family, music, small-time gangsters … and the fear of being sent to the Falklands by the biggest gangster of them all. Witty, energetic and entirely authentic, it’s also heartbreakingly honest, weaving together tragedy and comedy with an uncanny and unsettling elegance. A simply stunning debut.
This book … How do I even sum it up in one paragraph? Well, following the fortunes of Bobby and Joey as they try to set up a DJ business, we are treated to a story that is packed with humour, has an element of action, sort of, a fabulous and varied array of characters, from cocky teens to ageing Gangsters, and more emotion than I ever expected. I kid you not. After reading about Bobby’s unusual and very funny fumble with his girlfriend one minute, resulting in much merriment, I did not expect to be weeping over my coffee in Costa a short while later, but there is such poignancy in some of the passages that David F. Ross writes that i defy anyone not to be moved. The whole story is set against a time of great flux for the country, early eighties Thatcher Britain, and the Falklands War has a very significant part to play in what happens and some of the most emotional scenes in the book. Delicately handled but so effective. And you may need a translator for some of the language early on, but it is easy to fall into the rhythm of the narrative. You may even learn a new phrases along the way. If you want book that will take you down memory lane with a vast array of musical escapism and will make you laugh out loud at the absurdity of the battle between Fat Franny and Heatwave, the The Last Days of Disco is definitely one for you. Definitely recommended.
You can find my full review here.
Happy #bookvent reading all
Jen
Jen Med's Book Reviews 