2007 BC picks - from the card catalog

Yet again, the ace handicappers in the TBA are posting their picks. And yet again, I am overwhelmed by the handicapping acumen of my blogging colleagues. So what can a librarian with modest skill do but scurry to the card catalog for some guidance on racing's big day?

Sadly, I didn't get to post Friday's selections, where a peek at the the records for Maryfield Academy by Carla Tomaso, Now now now by Charles Plymell, et al, and Georgette Heyer's The Corinthian would have helped my intrepid readers cash some tickets. I'm hoping the catalog is on a streak and will turn up some winners for Saturday, too.

Juvenile Fillies
I expected the library catalog to have something on Phantom Income (finance), Indian Blessing (religion and inspiration) or even Smart Deb-utantes (Social life and customs). But I struck out with all of the entries in this race until, at last, I discovered Zee-Zee: A Comedy in Three Acts. Apparently, this 1927 play won a Penn Publishers prize; I'm hoping Zee Zee, until now a turf runner, can win on dirt.


Juvenile
Here I found plenty of options involving Globalization, and I was delighted to find that a search for "Wicked Style" leads to Tip on a Dead Jockey, a short story collection by Irwin Shaw, but in the end, the news from California led to my selection of Pyro, a novel about fire fighters.


Filly and Mare Turf
The catalog yielded a number of choices in this race: the novels Passage of Time, and Simply Perfect, a parent's guide called All My Loving, and of course, that whole long shelf of books on Argentina in the 982 section. Though all of these books for adults are hard to ignore, I'm going with a children's book: Wait a While, part of the Reading Rainbow series.


Sprint
It's hard to resist Bill Holman's 1938 novel Smokey Stover, The Foo Fighter, but I'm going with the even more wonderfully titled Idiot Proof: Deluded Celebrities, Irrational Power Brokers, Media Morons, and the Erosion of Common Sense by Francis Wheen. It's catalogued under "Thought and thinking -- History -- 20th Century"; who knew this was a subject heading?



Mile
The catalog is simply overflowing with Rebellion titles (including a romance from Nora Roberts!), and I was amazed by how many Jeremy's appear in titles. Still, I rejected them all, and narrowed down my choices in this race to Joseph Conrad's Typhoon and Purim! by Camille Kress. To help me decide, I took a peek at them in the paddock:





OK, that guy fighting the elements on the cover of Typhoon might indicate a lot of heart, but the exclamation point in Purim! makes me think this one's ready to run -- and I'm taking the backwards R as a wink. Since I always bet horses that wink at me, Purim gets the nod here.



Distaff
Here, my options were limited. There's the late David Halberstam's Teammates about 1940s-era Red Sox players (and geez, aren't the Sox in the World Series this year?) and not much else ... except Hysterical Fiction: The Woman's Novel in the Twentieth Century, a lit-crit tome by Clare Hanson. This is the sort of obscure suggestion from the catalog that I simply cannot resist, so the pick goes to (you guessed it!) Hystericalady.



Turf
No discussion here. Books about that grand couturier, Monsieur Worth and the English Channel be damned: Dylan Thomas rules. And he reads aloud on the audiobook that I've selected here, Dylan Thomas Reads.



Classic
OK, the father of our country gets loads of ink, but I think I'll have to go with the card that brought me the biggest payoff last year: Street Sense, It's Common Sense. Sure, it's getting a bit dog-eared, but isn't that appropriate when you're talking about a classic?


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Once again, a shout-out to library guru John Blyberg and his awesome catalog card generator!