Open Throat

You can't be too mad over a book that weighs in at a slight 176 pages. Even that number is misleading as it's narrated in an unbroken stream of consciousness with spare lines that scatter on the page like poetry. You could finish this in an afternoon.

It's hypnotizing. You're following a mountain lion barely surviving as they prowl the area surrounding the Hollywood sign. The lion listens to mangled snippets of conversations that translate into “scare city under capitalism” and “that's the thing with ellay...all we've got here is gurus.” And then it veers into a surreal fever dream as the lion imagines themself in Disney, snuck in as an emotional support cat to ride Splash Mountain and sit on an elevated sofa to lick their paws to a regal polish. And still, it ever so lightly manages to touch on homelessness, climate change, and pay homage to P-22, the cougar that once prowled Griffith Park in Los Angeles before being caught.