Blender is a great application, but quirky, and the learning curve actually seems to vary a lot from person to person. It may actually be better that you're a total newbie at 3d modelling, rather than coming in with preconceptions from other programs so you're not thrown as much when blender does something in an unusual way. Wings is another great application, and it does what it does very well and intuitively. It does some things better than Blender (in my opinion, anyway)--which makes sense, since it's so specialized. Often I find myself taking models back and forth between the two programs when something is just easier to do in the other, don't forget that that's always an option :) As for the manual, I've found the printed one isn't much different from the online one, which is available for free. (http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/ and http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlII/ in case you haven't found them) Admittedly I just read through a few sections in the bookstore, so I may have missed something.