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Have you read the new book, A Layman's Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours: How the Prayers of the Church Can Change Your Life? I got it hoping that it would teach me all of the intricacies of how to pray the Divine Office. It didn’t really do that, but it was big in giving me an appreciation of how awesome praying the Psalms is. They are prayed in heaven daily! Jesus prayed these same prayers, too. Once someone understands that, they’re bound to be more interested in trying it out.

If it were me, I would also spend some time on what the LOTH has done for me. I always wanted to improve my prayer life. I prayed that it would improve. I tried praying the Rosary during Lent but it wouldn’t stick. The LOTH was the solution that I was afraid to try. It seemed so complicated but I got hooked as I figured it out. My prayers used to mostly involve me asking for things/praying for people. Now I spend time every day praising God with words that I never could’ve come up with myself.

Well, the Divine Office was the first thing Calvin did away with (as well as with those who prayed it!), arguing that it was too much text to be intellegible. Actually, I have met many Reformed pastors still very opposed to Divine Office, wich surprised me, because in Catholic circles, it is admitted that "ecumenical vespers" are the favoured way of making liturgy during the Octave of Unity. Their argument is that it is too much Word of God, and that, in the church, only so much Word of God that we can explain in the sermon should be uttered. Therefore, praying 3 or 5 psalms one after the other are "pagan, vain and unnnecessary repetition". So, I find that interest in the Divine Office should lead you to question your theological opinions.

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That said, you have various options you may enjoy::

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- Use a simplified version of the Catholic Divine Office, with only the Temporal, that is, the 6 offices of the day during ordinary time. You'll get a Hymn, 3 psalms, and a scripture reading for each office, and no office of readings. You'll not find "bothersome" Catholic saints and doctrine in that! it is called Christian Prayer and should satisfy you in that it is very biblical. you can even find and abbreviated for of the abbreviated form called Shorter Christian Prayer that has only Lauds and Vespers.

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- There is a Lutheran Divine office called Daily Prayer of the Church.

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- And there is even a Presbyterian publication called Book of Common Worship: Daily Prayer.

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In any case this Facebook group should help you: Despite of its title, it is very ecumenical and joins people from all Christian denominations, dedicated to prayer the Hours.

It's an interesting question, but I feel anyone who's actually tried to do the Office consistently knows why the rosary is kind of "the Office for everyone else."

I would like to see more usage of lay-oriented popular offices like Father Frey's Daily Psalm Book or the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

>I don't chant the office at all. Usually I make up or follow a tune in my head for the hymn though. I love the idea of using a tone for the more important antiphons like the invitatory or the Benedictus/Magnificat. Maybe I should look into it! My breviary set (Collins Divine Office) doesn't contain chant guides, as far as I'm aware.

Do you read music, standard notation and/or neumes?

I started chanting Fr. Weber's The Office of Compline. And I have also used the Mundelein Psalter, which offers tones that are very simple and adaptable.

Here are some sample pages of the Mundelein. Check out this setting for II Vespers. If you scroll down to the Magnificat, you'll see that the tone used is called 1F. I use that tone for almost anything.

Absolute best (for both your questions) is a Cambridge 1662 BCP. They also have a larger size edition for about $5 more, I think it's called the "Enlarged Edition" or something like that. The 1662 is the Prayer Book nonpareil, Tom's Digest has some recent posts on why that might be.

Although I'm traveling for business and not backpacking, I found this to be nice to take along: http://www.amazon.com/Shorter-Christian-Prayer-Four-Week-Containing/dp/0899424082/

As far as educational resources go, I might suggest books like this.

The surprise for me was the reference to the Gelineau tones. GIA has taken the books out of print, & they seldom come up on ebay. The pdf of the 1960's book that you can find on the web is a bit of a chore to try to sing from, to say the least.
this is probably the most complete recording...