Rather than slogging through a book, you might want to consider Oxfords Meteorology CD. I found it very useful, and I had pretty good notes to study on through my course.
If you don't have a computer, you could buy Bristol's Met course notes for a fee:
www.bristol.gs - I think they charge £85 for each module. These are the notes I used, and are of a very high quality, with lots of colourful diagrams! Oxford also sell their course notes, but I can't comment on their quality.
There is a book by Airlife, called Meteorology for Pilots, can't think of the author, but I'm not sure how helpful it will be. It was only marginally better in some areas than the notes too. Besides, it was also a few hundred pages long.