I've been teaching ESL in Japan for five years. I've had so little training, so little observation, so little feedback. I need a review and some inspiration. Could you suggest a good book of useful advice and reminders that will help me be a better ESL teacher?

"Pedagogy of the oppressed" by Pablo Freire

FR

You can read any of H. Douglas Brown's books on education, they are really good. Here is a link where you can see all the books available:
http://www.shop4author.com/H.%20Douglas%20Brown/

Learning Teaching- Jim Scrivener

The Friere book mentioned above is also a good one.

Better in what sens? Sometimes, we only need to renew our teaching strategies.
I am a future ESL teacher and there is a book that we used in my pedagogy class and that I find very useful. It is the kind of book you do not want to sell to an other student but that you want to keep for ever. It includes different "cooperative learning structures and lesson designs" that are easy to follow and understand. It also gives you some "ready to use" activities. It could be good to take a look at it to find new activities for your students.
For sure it depends on the level you teach but I think that a lot of these structures can work for any level or age. Here is a link where you can find it : http://www.kaganonline.com/catalog/lang ... teracy.php . It is named "Cooperative Learning & Language Arts".