Chess books?

[Alfil]

I'll third or 4th Silman's book. Other than that, pick up a good tactics book or cd (Intensive Course Tactics through ChessBase is pretty good), pick up a good endgame book (avoid books by Nunn or Dvoretsky/Yusupov at this time), and I'd also recommend Bronsteins "Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953," which has many excellently annotated games that in conjunction with learning tactics and the endgame will expose you to openings without delving into too much theory.

Another idea is to buy a book of annotated games and play through them- 60 Memorable by Fischer is a classic, and collections by Reti, Capablanca, or Alekhine are good for beginners since the games tended to not be as complicated back then. Also I think chesscafe.com is a good site overall and has very good articles at times.

I would recommend studying tactics and endgames first since it doesn't really matter if you are +/= out of the opening if you don't know how to exploit it.