There's a shortage of good books aimed at the beginning or intermediate ship modeler. The usual pattern seems to be that the veterans write books and articles that show off their stuff (which frequently scares normal mortals out of the hobby), and the "beginner books" are written by people who never got far beyond beginner status themselves.
If I had to recommend one source for starters it probably wouldn't be a book but a set of CD-ROMs: the set that contains the full run of the magazine Ships in Scale. Those two CDs are a real treasure chest of information about ship modeling on many levels, with as wide a range of subject matter as anybody could ask for. They're available through the website of the magazine: <www.seaways.com>. They'd set you back quite a few sheckles, but they're more than worth it. The two CDs contain thousands of pages of information.
As for books - I'll start with the assumption that you're most interested in twentieth-century warships. A good introduction to the subject, if you can find a copy for an affordable price, is Building Warship Models, by P.C. Coker. It contains hundreds of inspirational pictures and a good, solid text. Its big weaknesses are scarcity and age: it was published in 1974, so it's pretty dated now.
A slightly newer one is Scale Model Warships, edited by John Bowen. This is a British book, first published in 1978. I think I'd recommend it as the best general text on the subject with which I'm familiar. Its age is a problem (photo etching, for instance, was just appearing on the scene in the late seventies), but it's full of good, solid material and has an excellent chapter on plastic kits. (The Coker book tends to thumb its nose at plastic, except as a scratchbuilding material.)
An excellent work that just came out a year or so ago is Building Model Warships of the Iron and Steel Eras, edited by Peter Beisheim. This one falls more in the category of inspirational literature, in that most of the articles in it deal with highly-detailed, scratchbuilt models. It does, however, contain a fine - and up-to-date - chapter on plastic kits by one of the most knowledgeable people in the business, Loren Perry.
Mr. Perry's company, Gold Medal Models, sells a paperback book on the use of photo-etched detail parts. I don't have the title in my head, but it's available through the Gold Medal website.
Our good friends at Kalmbach, of course, publish a couple of good books on basic ship modeling skills. I suspect, though, that if you're taking part in this forum you may well already have most of the info in those.
That's where I'd recommend starting. Modern warship modeling isn't my biggest personal interest, though; some of the other members may have some other ideas. Good luck. It's a great hobby.