Get Good at Programming

Serious question. How do I get good? I know C and Java but I don't really know programming outside of loops and pointers and simple programming exercises and shit. When I try to read source code from a small open source C project, I get daunted and just stop before I even begin because everything just looks alien to me. There are stuff like makefiles and shit. It makes me sad. I don't even know data structures yet. I want to read SICP but I'm not comfortable with it yet so I'm reserving that book when I've amassed enough background.

>>1
The people that tell you books are the way to go are right. I wish they weren't, but even relatively clean open source projects are not well commented (nor do they need to be). K&R is a start; after that, sit down with a function from some random project and figure out what it does. If you find a function call, then go and look at that function, and so on until you are working with stdlib calls. Hopefully you won't pick two mutually calling functions ha ha.