personally, I think for raw beginners Exodus wallet is the best. Use that while waiting to get a hardware wallet delivered - they are in short supply for awhile now. (Trezor, Ledger Nano S, Keepkey)
Just concentrate on dollar cost averaging into bitcoin, ethereum, dash, litecoin and you will do fine, imo. after learning more you can later diversify into more coins.
yeah and about the bitcoin fork, at this point, just avoid btc until afterwards