Hey! As far as wallets go I am assuming you are referring to desktop wallets. All in all they are similar, I have a mac and I use Hive. It is trusted and easy to use. For PC maybe check out multibit or blockchain.info. As far as mining pools, I have been out of the mining game for a while, but when it comes to mining Bitcoins now there is a slightly hire price to pay due to newer and better hardware coming out.
If you want to trade around with altcoins some hot ones right now seem to be LXC, GB, AERO, (RAW/ROOT are super new atm). These are newer and more volatile. For example, a "safer" one with somewhat of a legitimate community is Reddcoins. Of course, do some research before investing.
Hope this helps,
Dr. Coin
https://twitter.com/DrCoinMD