Well I sat down on Friday evening to watch the draw for euro 2012 (european football championship) .So as the numerous ins and outs of the draw were explained how each team was put in each bag and how when the matches are to be played decide .So I sat there hoping our draw would be easy and looking forward to next summer and yet again living the dream of an english victory .So as I did two years ago I m going to tie up a number of posts in june to focusing on each country and the team and writers from each country and my memories of the teams playing . I did same two years ago with some of the world cup teams in 2010 .I want to use this as a way to get men reading and boys ,As a shocking stat today from the literacy trust in the uk showed that an estimate 3.8 million children don’t own a book ,I know from other such surveys that most of these will be young boys that will grow up to be young men that don’t interact with books so again I m using football of a way of promoting literature in translation and books in general in a fun way .Using football pics and players names to help get people there via google search for these terms .So I was fairly happy with our draw and felt we did about as good as we could with the middle in competiveness of the groups as one group fairly easy group A and one very hard group which is group B ,well enough of the football talk, here are the groups –
Group A
Poland
Greece
Russia
Czech Republic
Group B
Holland
Denmark
Germany
Portugal
Group C
Spain
Italy
Republic of Ireland
Croatia
Group D
Ukraine
Sweden
France
England
So maybe if the FA in the uk could hand the English players a Steig Larson ,Andrey Kurkov and Jean Echenoz novel and Kids watch could see Rooney or Wiltshire reading them and asking why and they could say it is to help the players learn about the teams there playing and maybe we could start a debate on books and reading around our players and the young kids watch could be inspired to read like their hero’s where doing ? Anyway my question for some help is some choices from Croatia ,Poland and Ukraine that you may have read ,I ve read a few from each but would love some extra books and writers to include in June .Also on reading european fiction may I mention Rose city readers European reading challenge for next year to get you in the mood .I d like to wish my readers from round europe all the best I know some of you may have been disappointed with draw .
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