Benedictine Matins, or the Night Office, is not something to be embarked on lightly.
With fourteen psalms on weekdays, as well as readings, and a much longer structure for Sundays and major feasts, it is by far the longest of the hours even on ordinary days. Indeed, it can sometimes as take as long to say or sing as all of the other hours added together.
That said, it is the workhorse of the Benedictine Office, with its psalms making up around half the psalter, and a reading pattern that includes selections from most of the books of the Bible, thus serving to frame the practice of monastic lectio divina.
It also has one of the most extensive, spiritually rich and beautiful of all the types of chant repertoire, in the form of the responsories which follow each reading, and provide a meditation on them.
Books for Matins
A few years ago, it was almost impossible to find books for Matins according to the 1960 rubrics and calendar, and those that were available were either extremely expensive or highly unsatisfactory in one respect or another.
Fortunately, that situation has now completely turned around: these days we are almost spoiled for choices!
Latin-English
1. For those who need an English translation to help with the Latin, the best choice is the Gower nuns' set of Latin-English Matin's books.
They have everything you need at a very reasonable price, and the obvious choice if you need help understanding the Latin.
But be warned: you need to learn the structure of the how first, as the books are not always particularly user friendly!
Other useful books with English translations I've previously referred people to include the Clear Creek Matins psalter and the Liturgical Readings text, but if you have the Gower books, you won't really need these.
The Breviary/Nocturnale
For all of the texts of Matins, your basic choices are:
2. The Monastic Breviary (Latin only).
Has everything you need for the hour (and all of the others), in reasonably compact form, comes in two volumes. Aside from the original 1963 versions, there are two reprints available, from the monasteries of Brignoles (which includes a supplement with most older feasts included) and Farnborough.
3. Le Barroux's Nocturnale Monasticum (available in Latin only or French-Latin versions).
The alternative, if you want something for Matins only, are the two Nocturnales from Le Barroux. Nicely laid out and well-organized in a nice large print that is excellent for putting on a choir stand, but quite large and heavy so not particularly portable or something you want to hold in your hands for a long period of time.
The chants
It is also worth mentioning that chants for the hour are also becoming more readily available.
The Monastery of Brignoles has already published Volume 1 of a full (Latin only) Nocturnale with chants, that essentially provides you with the core hymns and prayers contained in the psalter section of the hour.
Volume 1 gives you the daily hymns, ferial antiphons, psalms, canticles and the key seasonal texts. Volumes 2 (the temporale) and 3 (sanctorale) are still to come, but there is enough in this one to get you started.
Devotional vs liturgical
My strong recommendation is that unless you are obliged to say the hour (ie are a priest, religious or canonical hermit), and have some familiarity with it already, to start off with, aim to pray this hour devotionally. That way you are free to say as much or as little of it as you like, and to use English if you prefer. It also means that you have greater flexibility in terms of the books you use to say the hour with.
Accordingly, for the purpose of this series, I'm going to assume, for the moment at least, that you are praying it devotionally. Over time you can build up to the full thing according to all of the official rubrics if you wish, and I'll point you to the resources that I know of to enable you to do this.
