I've never found any hook to be particularly a problem to work with. Yarn-wise, I'd avoid anything too slippery, fluffy, or really heavily textured, to begin with, as it can be hard to keep hold of, or to see what you're doing. Just ordinary double knitting yarn is generally a good starting point.
One thing with crochet is that, although in general it's very straightforward (much easier than knitting, in my opinion), working the first row of stitches into your foundation chain is an absolute pig, and that can very easily be frustrating to beginners. So, when I teach people to crochet I always start with granny squares. You can make a blanket really easily with them, and they're worked round and round from the middle, rather than across in rows, so basically you don't have to do that awkward bit. And granny squares really do give you that classic 'crochet blanket' look! If you look on YouTube, you'll find lots of videos which are really helpful as you can see the stitches being worked.
One thing to be careful of - confusingly, you'll find that there are UK and US crochet terms (e.g. the names for stitches), so any given stitch isn't always called the same thing depending on whether the pattern has been written in UK or US terms (and, to make life extra specially fun, the same names sometimes mean different stitches across the different sets of crochet terms). Don't let that put you off or panic you; it's just something to be aware of as your start to explore stitches and patterns! Patterns will generally tell you which terms they're using, so just keep an eye out for this.
Have fun - I love crochet!