I'm pretty much a novice, and a while ago on here someone recommended a book to me that they said was widely recognised as being the best and most accessible guide to anyone who wants to learn about home recording. I can't remember the name or the author, though. Anyone got any ideas what it might have been?

Mixing Audio by Roey Izhaki is a great book from the mixing side of things, but not really on the recording part.

I've heard a few people mention Guerilla Home Recording a few times. Was that it?

I don't think either of those were the one I'd heard mentioned before, Matt :(

Here's a little list of a few books:

http://recording.org/content/612-recording-books.html

I bought a book recently called "Mixing Secrets for the small studio" by Mike Senior. I think for me as a newby has a lot of information in it and is easy to read.
Along with the book , he also has a website www.cambridge-mt.com which has a lot of practice sounds that go with the book.
What I like about it is that there are raw tracks that you can download and put in your DAW in order to practice mixing. The best part is that the website is free for anyone to use even if you didn't buy the book. All the raw tracks are in different styles of music , which gives you a wide spectrum of mixes you can practice.

Hope this was useful.

Danny
 
On the website you go to free resources  

The "Mixing Audio" book as mentioned gets another vote here for the mixing side.

You could do worse than glance your eye over the Tweakheadz Lab" HERE although his style may not suit everyone.

Mixing Audio by Roey Izhaki

A good place to start.

Mike Senior is really good, yeah.

cowboydan

I bought a book recently called "Mixing Secrets for the small studio" by Mike Senior. I think for me as a newby has a lot of information in it and is easy to read.
Along with the book , he also has a website www.cambridge-mt.com which has a lot of practice sounds that go with the book.

+1 on Mike Senior's book.  It covers the home music production process soup to nuts (recording to mixing to final export).  The Izhaki is much more comprehensive about the mixing aspects.  Plan to read that one more than once.  They are both excellent choices, but starting with the Senior book might be more advantageous to you at this point.

My personal favorite was the Mixing engineer's handbook by bobby owsinski. I just feel like everything was broken down really nice. The author breaks down the 6 elements he believes make a good mix - balance, frequency range, panorama, dimension, dynamics, and interest. they each get there own chapter with full explanations on each technique that is used to manipulate that element as well as examples of songs on the radio using these techniques. things like compression eq and gating are covered on an instrument by instrument bases. how to calculate delay times, how to fatten up certain instruments, how to pan tracks for different types of music, rules for making a good arrangement. there are also chapters on mixing in surround vs stereo, mixing down on tape vs digital, and even a whole chapter on using and picking monitors. i like it most though because its one of those books that you learn more from by reading it over and over