Reading is fundamental, the title of this post. This is so basic that it's worth repeating, especially to a writer. One caveat, try not to read in the genre you are writing. The reason, you will not even accidentally include thoughts, ideas or passages in your writing that are not yours.
Now to reading. When you read a novel read the novel from several points of view. The basic one, to be entertained by the story. The second view point, see what you can learn from the author. How does he/she handle dialogue, scenes, introductions of characters, etc? Are his paragraphs short, long, or broken up. Each writer has a certain style, the point of learning is not copying a style but to see how the writer handled the writing technically. You may find fault with everything because the writer did this wrong, forgot this and should have included that, but remember you are reading a published book. Never become so jaded or envious of this fact.
As mentioned previously, writing is technical and the more techniques you learn the more proficient you become. My first writing teacher informed me very sternly, "learn all of the rules of writing and after you have learned them, you can break all the writing rules, and not before."
Trust me, I disagreed with him greatly, however, in retrospect and as much as it pains me to admit, he was one hundred percent right.
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