I agree - I've read a ton of books, but usually only take small nuggets of knowledge from them and end up having to reread them every few years. Instead, most of what I know about programming I gained by doing. Writing a lot of code levels you up, not reading about writing code.
I find reading books, articles, tutorials is a great way of finding out what you don't know and what you might want to try tinkering with next to level up, because otherwise you just use the same techniques over and over, but to actually level up you need to get down and dirty and write a lot of code.
I used to get little value out of books, then I started reading better books. Check out this Amazon list for some high quality books. Don't let the "Clojure" theme scare you, these will make you a better programmer in any language.
Actually, I use Clojure quite a bit, so that won't scare me at all!
I've already got Programming Clojure (and The Joy of Clojure - not on the list), Structure & Interpretation of Computer Programs and Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming. Purely Functional Data Structures and How to Solve it have been on my list for a long time too. Some other books that I haven't heard of before on that list look very interesting though!
I didn't really mean that I don't get value from books - I do - just that I find books to be only the first stage of learning and most useful in telling me what it is I don't know, which I then can study and try for myself and its the experimentation and tinkering that actually makes it sink in.
I find reading books, articles, tutorials is a great way of finding out what you don't know and what you might want to try tinkering with next to level up, because otherwise you just use the same techniques over and over, but to actually level up you need to get down and dirty and write a lot of code.