If you're a novice, here's some good advice: play lots of games, but when you study, study tactics. Get some basics down on the endgame, some strategy concepts, but just the very basics, and then just study tactics. And by that I mean do tactical exercises. Most of your games, as in 98% of them, will be lost/won due to tactical errors and blunders (a blunder is just a really, really bad tactical error). If you keep to tactics you'll get pretty good over time. When you reach, say 1800, you can start getting to grips with some deeper strategical ideas, study more openings, etc.

Oh, and since you asked about books, here are two books that came to mind and are pretty good (and you can go through them in this order): Winning Chess Tactics by Seirawan Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors by Lou Hays

Oh, and don't mind the 'Winning' in both titles. You'll lose plenty of games right now :-)