beginner html help

I'm teaching myself html & css by constructing a basic wee site (free hosting, a few directories, nothing too complicated) and I was interested in putting a box (for a blog/"word of the day" style feature) in the top right hand corner of the main page, but I cannot figure out a way to do this. I would appreciate it greatly if someone could provide a basic framework that I could work around for constructing this feature.

Also, I would appreciate a recommendation for an HTML reference book that is available in the UK.

People seem to ignore the fact that CSS and tables don't have to be mutually exclusive. I use tables when I need to do multi-column layouts, since just like >>9 said, at the moment there are no non-retarded, cross-platform methods to do it in pure CSS (tables were not specifically created for such layouts though, we just started using them because there was nothing better available). But other than that, there's really no reason not to use semantic elements and style your stuff with CSS. It's not web 2.0 wankery, it makes your code more readable, accessible and easily modifiable, and reduces bandwidth usage as well.

As for reference books, why waste your money? The web is full of tutorials, references and whatnot. Yes, many of them are bad and written by people who don't really understand what they're doing, but avoiding those shouldn't be a problem.

HTML and CSS are easy. It really doesn't take any more than a trip to Google to get started.