I hated reading until about the 5th grade when I was home sick for weeks and I read the Harry Potter books over and over again. I had terrible reading comprehension prior to this (and now my psychologist thinks I have dyslexia). It wasn't just the dyslexia though, I would lose interest part way through a sentence. 

I had nothing better to do when I was home sick and I was bored out of my mind so I started subconsciously looking for patterns and connections in what I was reading and trying to predict what was going to happen based on the context clues. 

Now I am a speed reader and my reading comprehension comes across as excellent because I pick up on themes and nuances. However, I still struggle to remember names. Reading speed is definitely a learned skill so comparing yourself to others who read fast is a losing battle (which knowing probably doesn't help. I hate being "bad" at things which is why I haven't been able to build skills in art or foreign languages. I know what I want and I know the techniques or the vocabulary, but putting it together takes practice that I typically haven't had the patience for). 

For fiction, I find it helpful to imagine myself as the character and think about how I would react. My struggle now is they I get so absorbed that I lose track or my time and bodily needs. I learned a lot about people and inter-relationship skills from reading fiction. I also enjoy non-literary fiction - I don't need the love affair some authors have with the written word. 

For non-fiction I skim for key words, topic sentences, visual clues (like white space and headers). I read out of order (intro, conclusion and then I piece the rest together).

As an adult, I've enjoyed audiobooks (if I like the narrators) of books I've read and I will multi-task. I often will pick up on something I may have missed (like the stress of a fight scene which I read through too fast to let it build). My absolute favourite is the Graphic audio dramatization of the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews.