I’ve finished reading this compact but excellent book:
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
The book is written in an easy to read form; you will pick up the basic aspects of usability in this book.
The cartoons are funny and help to understand the main ideas. It use several examples from real world showing you common mistakes and easy to implement solutions for making a site really usable.
http://safari.oreilly.com/0321344758
