Books

Does anyone know any good beginner chess books?

Better Chess for Average Players by Tim Harding is a very good book for beginners

 That's the one I'm reading now and am learning a lot from it.

The London Chess Centre always recommends Seirawan's "Play Winning Chess" to people whenever I overhear conversations in there. 

"Better Chess for Average Players" was among the first chess books I bought (maybe two or three years ago), and I didn't find it that helpful. Although there are lots of concepts covered, with many illustrative games, I wasn't able to really apply it to any of my games. It could just be that it was too advanced for me.

I think I have learned most (although still not much - see any of my games) about the "correct" way to play chess from reading the first half of "My System" - again, much of the book is well above my level, but the first section on "The Elements" gives a very clear picture of what to be aware of on the board, aside from simple tactical considerations.

At the moment I am part way through "Silman's Complete Endgame Course", which presents a lot of material divided into graded sections, allowing you to study only up to whatever level you feel necessary.

Finally, I'd recommend that unless you're doing tactics puzzles elsewhere, a tactics book would give the greatest improvement in your play. I enjoyed "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess", but it's quite short and simple. Maybe worth it if you can pick up a very cheap copy. I'm working through Reinfeld's "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations", and my only complaint would be that the problems aren't graded according to difficulty: sometimes I'll spend ages struggling with a problem that turns out to be a ten move nightmare.

I would heartily endorse Silman's "Complete Book of Chess Strategy" as a good starting point. He has a very clear writing style, doesn't bury you with too much notation - and gives solid advice on how to make smart choices in a game.

After I started working my way through his book - I felt like I had far fewer games where I was moving without a plan (I'm not saying my plans were any good, mind you ).

 that's a book I bought a long time ago

Play Better Chess by Leonard Barden is very good too, especially for absolute beginners and younger people. It's fairly old at this stage but you may be able to pick up a 2nd hand copy around somewhere...

 Of course they don't, but when you are learning how to play it helps to study tactics and ideas that you can properly absorb and understand.  Having a beginner player study advanced puzzles that require a 6 move combination before learning basic pins and forks and skewers would be crazy, he would get every problem wrong and never understand why.  Everyone has to start somewhere. 

I don't know anything about the Pandolfini books, but Seirawan's "Play Winning Chess" series is a good recomendation.  I would recomend Logical Chess Move by Move by Chernov and a very basic chess tactics book like Chess Tactics for Students. With Logical Chess, don't spend a lot of time studying it, just play through the games and note a lot of the principals he brings up such as king safety and piece development.  With the chess tactics book, and I'm sure any basic chess tactics book would do, practice the tactics over and over until you can solve them without any effort.  Once you are able to recognize all the basic tactics, you will easily see a 300 point gain just from being able to avoid basic knight forks and pins.  At this point don't waste any time on the more classical books like "My System" or "The Art of Attack", just get the basics down and play more games.

NM Heisman's recommended reading list offers some excellent options.

http://danheisman.home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Events_Books/General_Book_Guide.htm

"Chess" by Lazlo Polgar comes very close.