Being "well read" does not necessarily mean being a speed reader. It means you are well informed because of your reading. It may be just one topic, but generally it is considered (or used to be) that you could carry on a conversation in most subjects because of what you had read and remembered.

I think it would be good to figure out if you read better from a computer screen, tablet or a handheld book first. My comprehension rate drops when it's not something on paper.

Make sure you are not reading out loud.
Make sure you are not moving your lips when you read (easy to find out with today's phone cameras).
Begin with something you want to read, and is at your word knowledge level.
Then stop reading one word at a time... force yourself to see two or three words at a time... and work up from there.

Speed readers allow the eye to see and the brain to take in whole paragraphs at a time.

My reading rate is only 650 wpm... I wish it were more but with the head trauma, I'm happy I can read at all!

Stick with it... and yes, reading more does increase your vocabulary and level of reading.

(The person I had been married to was in college with an 8th grade reading level... and he hated to read. So I bought him magazines about the things he was interested in (fishing, flying etc) and by the second year of college he was up to a 10th grade level.)