I've developed a few products that use this module.
There are a lot of registers due to the filters and buffers available. The cool thing about the CAN bus is the hardware level data validation and re-transmitting on error.
I recommend Microchip's (no I don't work for Microchip) Eval board MCP2510 CAN Developer's Kit. You can download manuals from their website for free to see if it suits you.
One thing to note about CAN. There are a few "Higher Layer Protocols" for CAN based on what your intended application is.
Check out
http://www.kvaser.com/can/intro/ for a good overview.
The Microchip kit mentioned above uses the CANKingdom protocol.