i like most of those instructional books that come with sets...the ones that try to get you excite by teaching you chess history and such...not because they are terribly instructional...but because they are so pathtically not
I forget the proper title, but once had a book from the library which was something like " how to play against annoying openings" It was a great bus read, with plenty of diagrams for when brain could not follow the text
Out of Print but the 2 vol. "Best of Chess Life and Review" by Bruce Pandolfini. The OLD edition of "Soviet School of Chess" by Kotov & Yudovich" also long oop.