Reddit mentions of How I Play Golf

Ben Hogan's 5 Lessons-great for fundamentals
Tiger Woods: How I Play Golf -great for teaching you different shots
Harvey Penick's Little Red Book-great for learning fundamentals and interesting little stories

You should be able to find all 3 for >$50

I played occasionally as a kid but really started taking the game seriously about 4 or 5 years ago. I'm playing to a 6 handicap at the moment.

As far as equipment, I'd recommend starting off buying a used set off kijiji or from a garage sale. I say this because I've had friends who were eager to learn the game yet after a couple rounds of pure frustration, decided it wasn't worth it.

If your absolutely positive you want to pick up the game for the long term, then you still don't need to break to bank to get a nice set of equipment. People think that a shiny new driver with a $500 price tag is gonna fix their slice but you simply cannot buy your way out of a fundamentally flawed swing. You can get a perfectly fine set of clubs for 2-300 bucks. Hell, I'm still using the original Cleveland Hibore driver which came out about 8 or 9 years ago and see no reason to switch it.

As far as irons go, you should probably lean towards a set of cavity back irons with a wider sole. This will help you get the ball airborne and help promote solid contact with the ball.

To learn how to swing the club, I mainly copied the positions from How I Play Golf by Tiger Woods in the mirror. That along with various tips from golf digest. I now get the odd lesson from the swing coach I've been with for a few years now. I had success doing this but my only regret would be to have gotten a few lessons earlier on. Trust me, once you've got an incorrect motion ingrained into your swing after years of doing it that way, it often takes thousands of swings to correct it.

Anyways, I could go on and on but if you have any more questions I'd be happy to help.

Family were avid golfers already and I picked up a gift my dad had received.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tiger-Woods-Play-Golf-Ryder/dp/0446529311

Poured a lot of time into reading this before ever getting onto a course or range!

Here's the list of books I've found most useful with a brief reason why:

• Harvey Penick's Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf, Harvey Penick -- simply the best golf advice book ever written.
  
• How I Play Golf, Tiger Woods -- has the best pictures I've seen and Tiger's swing at the time of writing was the best ever.
  
• Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible, Dave Pelz -- I think this is an excellent book for teaching you how to think about the short game, even though I disagree with some of the advice given.
  
  I strongly recommend this book, which is not on the swing but on the mental aspects of the game:
  
  
• Golf is Not a Game of Perfect, Dr. Bob Rotella
  
  I also recommend Palmer's book about the rules of golf and Kathy Whitworth's book about her career. But, neither are about the golf swing, per se. Both are available on Kindle, IIRC. I would encourage you to read Hogan's "Five Lessons" only from a historical perspective, if at all. Much of the advice is not particularly good and the pictures and diagrams are wildly inaccurate.