Reddit mentions of The Best Kitchen Quick Tips: 534 Tricks, Techniques, and Shortcuts for the Curious Cook

This book has tons of interesting little tips.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Kitchen-Quick-Tips/dp/0936184655/

My favorite one, though, is this one for peeling hazelnuts:

http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/how-to-peel-skin-hazelnuts/

My everyday cookbook is How to Cook Everything Fast by Mark Bittman. I recommend it for anyone who's past the boiling water phase and is competent at reading recipes, but who wants to learn to put things together on their own - the stage I was at when I got it. I could prattle on about this book, but the most important things to me as a novice cook are:

1. It emphasizes flow in the kitchen. Many recipes assume you already have everything diced, peeled, cleaned, etc. This book assumes you just came home from the grocery store. It lists everything you have to do in an order that makes sense, like reminding you to preheat your oven or get your oil hot before you start vegetable prep.
   
2. It encourages substitution. Most of the recipes have several variations and there are a few "recipe-free" recipes, telling you how to put together a basic soup, braise meat, or cook a pilaf with whatever you have on hand.
   
3. True to name, it's quick. Cooking a 3 hour recipe is great for special occasions, but not every night. Most of the recipes take about 30 minutes - add sides (which it will recommend for you, by the way) and cleanup, and you're looking at 45 minutes to put a full dinner on the table. You get more cooking experience in this way too.
   
4. A few different cuisine styles are emphasized, so you'll learn which spices, meats, veggies, etc. play nicely with each other. Even so, even the most poorly equipped supermarket will get you through 90% of the recipes. Similarly, the only special equipment he calls for is a food processor. No waffle iron, ice cream machine, or sous vide recipes here.
   
   By the way, it's crazy cheap on Kindle right now. I'm not a huge fan of the e-book layout - I vastly prefer my paper book - but if you wanted to check it out for $3, now's the time.
   
   I'd recommend anything by Bittman. There are a lot of New York Times articles you can read by him for free, too. He takes a very laid-back, intuitive approach to cooking that encourages experimentation, and I love that!
   
   Another favorite that used to be on my shelf but I lost in a move: Kitchen Quick Tips from Cook's Illustrated. I recommend just about anything from the America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated family. It's not a cookbook, but it's full of little tips on all sorts of kitchen things - the most efficient way to dice an onion, peel a potato, remove a stuck wine cork, etc. It's the sort of stuff you'd see on /r/Lifehacks but all collected into one place.