Yep, once you understand a bit of OO theory, and some C++ language syntax (so that you can actually read and write code); you're best off thinking of a project and trying to build it, then by reading examples and tutorials you'll just slowly build up your knowledge.
Books are good for teaching you theory and syntax, cookbooks are good for telling you how to do a few common operations (like reading a file etc), but most of your knowledge is really going to come from making programs. But seeing, and figuring out what other peoples source does is useful, just so long as you don't directly copy-paste it, but use it as a guideline.