A couple of articles that might help you get reasonable gear with minimal budget impact:

Dirtbagging and Deal Shopping by "Sgt.Rock"

The $300 Challenge by PMags He doesn't price thrift shop bargains, where diligent shopping might help you lower that $300 by quite a bit. (His rationale is explained in his article and makes sense because those are often one-time bargains.) Best of all, those are 2015 prices.

EDIT, LATER: the pmags.com site, like Sectionhiker, has a lot of articles geared to beginners. Also, if you haven't yet checked out the articles on the home page of this site, left hand column, there's lots of good info on gear selection there, plus some gear lists. Also be sure to read Phat's sticky post at the top of this Backcountry Beginners section. Some of our other members here have links to their gear lists in their signature line. Our member Topshot wrote a PhD dissertation for beginning Boy Scouts, which is here.

The last actual book about backpacking I read was back in the 1980's--Harvey Manning's "Backpacking One Step at a Time." Harvey was known as a curmudgeon although his book was often funny, but the gear he recommended was awfully heavy! Andrew Skurka has been mentioned; he makes a living teaching backpacking courses, some of which are for beginners. I haven't read his book, but there are lots of good articles on his site. He seems to have changed focus a bit since he started teaching; his book predates that change.