text books or pop books?

Text books are better, but you have to be realistic with them, they are designed to be studied not read in the same way you would a pop book. If you are still in A level don't expect to try and work your way through a full textbook, focus on learning and understanding some 1st year topics, eg in Micro focus on consumer theory and utility (A level tends to focus on producer theory), get to grips with preferences and so on. Then look at different market structures in producer theory, monopoly, oligopoly etc. In Macro focus on things like how the goods and money markets work maybe leading up to the ISLM model, that would be a good starter for you.

One thing to watch for which is annoying about A levels is their mark scheme is very strict about mentioning the things they want you to mention from your own syllabus, if they ask a question about unemployment and you start talking about equilibrium in the labour market and the Phillips curve, sacrifice ratio and disinflation, because you have read this stuff yourself, you are likely not to get many marks for it if that's not what the A level syllabus was looking for. So it doesn't pay in A level exams to have extra knowledge. The knowledge is useful just remember when you are examined, stick to the basic stuff you did on A level.

Quite inspiring:-)
so i'll do what the syllabus requires but read more when i'm free. It's just so many people are mentioning these pop books in PS and i would be bored after reading the 100th 'i read freakonomics' if im the officer. Also i found don't quite understand what economics news are talking about a bit frustrating and how can you talk about economics and your love of it in PS when you actually know so little.
Anyway thanks again and seems ur quite 'an early bird' :-)

Quite inspiring:-)
so i'll do what the syllabus requires but read more when i'm free. It's just so many people are mentioning these pop books in PS and i would be bored after reading the 100th 'i read freakonomics' if im the officer. Also i found don't quite understand what economics news are talking about a bit frustrating and how can you talk about economics and your love of it in PS when you actually know so little.
Anyway thanks again and seems ur quite 'an early bird' :-)

Exactly. Everybody says they have read the same pop books.

As 'pop' style reading I would recommend reading online blogs eg Krugman's NY times blog. The articles are short and they refer to some current issue in economics. Also the economics articles in broadsheet newspapers are good because you usually don't need more than A level to get the gist of it. If you have a Macro textbook as reference, then when there are parts you don't understand, you can look them up, I learned a lot through doing that type of stuff then when I came to study it at uni I was ahead of myself on some of the material.

Unless you've done some Macro you probably wont know what they're talking about, there's very rarely micro news. If it's personal statements you're looking to enhance find a book that truly interests you, I talked about Hernando de Soto's Mystery of Capitalism because of his work with development economics, which at the time time greatly interested me. These books are unlikely to be of any use to you for your exams though.

Agree with you. Pop books did sparked my interest and i want to go deeper in economics after these books. One thing for sure is that i'll stick with a level, and read some good text books and some pop books for fun and new thoughts. But perhaps my PS would still focus on the more professional but boring one, pop books would be a gate to the economic road (and worth mentioning?)

There's nothing wrong with having a pop book just don't make it the one every other Econ student uses or one that's very light on economics. More importantly you need to present a good view of the book and how it relates to you and your course.