There are very few good books about OOP. Generally, the larger the books are, the worse they are. I would recommend reading the C++ Annotations, which you can easily find out on the internet by looking them up in a search engine. They cover how to do things correctly in C++, and they're not full of useless info like most of the books.

blue

Crap this should have been a response to the thread I started below! Sorry about that one..

I'm not sure. I learned from The C++ Programming Language, 2nd ed. by Bjarne Stroustrup. This is a good reference but I would not recommend it for learning. The latest edition is a bit better.

Thanks. I was thinking along the lines of using a base 'item' and then breaking things down from there...but I wasn't sure. Can you recommend a good book on OOP that covers everything I would need?

C++ How to Program by Dietel / Dietel was what I used to learn OO. I think it does a pretty decent job of explaining as well as giving a nice intro to C++ if you aren't real familiar with it.

I'll agree about Stroustrup's book though. It can be a valuable reference but is about as much fun as reading a dictionary.