There are plenty of books, I started at www.w3schools.com They have great step by step tutorials..also most of the things you learn by doing it. In my experience..don't use any tool to generate html (specially in the beginning) and you will learn a lot.
well i would use a website, but im going on vacation for a month and im not going to have internet access
Really from the basic from the beginning in laymen terms the best book is Sams Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours. Here is a link to the table of contents http://www.samspublishing.com/library/library.asp?b=STY_html_24hours&rl=1
Most of the Sams' books are actually rubbish. I suggest you read Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way Using HTML & CSS by Ian Lloyd. Another useful recommendation (though the CSS examples are not the "best practices" the author claims since they can cause accessibility issues for some people - the image replacement technique advocated by the author being a perfect example of this) is "HTML, XHTML and CSS Visual Quickstart Guide, 6th Edition" by Elizabeth Castro.
Ah, but W3Schools does no good if the person wanting to use it doesn't have internet access (as the original poster will for about 4-5 weeks). This is one of those times when the "dead tree format" really comes through to save the day.