Reading List O' Mine

I know I just posted my latest reading list, but I finished the next list today while heading out to Olympic Park for the afternoon. Here's what I read:

• Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris - Another humorous series of essays collected mainly from Esquire magazine and NPR's This American Life, many concerned with growing up in the Sedaris household or with living in France and trying to learn French. His take on learning and speaking (or not speaking) a foreign language rang true with me living overseas; it was also thought-provoking to me as a teacher of a second language.
  
  
• The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston - This is a very different book than I usually read, but I was quite glad I gave it a chance--all based on the look of the cover. The story is about an elementary school teacher with a mysterious tragedy in the past (a couple of them, as it turns out) who has dropped out. He goes to work for a crime scene clean-up team and gets romantically involved with a girl whose father committed suicide--and involved in some nefarious business dealings. The noir storytelling is unique and really strong, the kind of thing you don't want to put down.
  
• When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park - This is a Yearling book for young adults by an American writer with a Korean heritage. Her previous books are set in ancient Korea, but this one takes place during the Japanese colonial period and WWII. The POV alternates by chapter between Sun-hee, a young girl, and her older brother Tae-yul. As the war begins to go badly for the Japanese, deprivations in their village become greater, and the children learn their paternal uncle has been using his printing shop to publish newspapers and leaflets for the resistance. School stops being about education as the children fill sandbags, sharpen bamboo spears and prepare for invasion. Tae-yul joins the Imperial Japanese army in order to reap benefits for the rest of the family, calculating that Japan will lose the war before his training ends. Was he right? Read the book to find out. Really.