Classics? What Classics?

When I was younger you would seldom find a moment when I was without a book in my hand. I read and read, but I read crap. I read basically just Babysitter's Club books until grade 5 or 6.

So you'd be surprised if I told you the truth, which is that I've never really read any classics before. Except for The Picture of Dorian Gray. But that's it. I was never assigned any Grand Work of British or American lit in high school English class and I've never felt compelled to read any of them by myself. It's not like I'm avoiding them or have a natural hate for them; I've just never found a reason to read them. I've wanted to many times - in the library I've always wandered over to the Jane Austen section, I've checked out Middlemarch and pictured Anna Karenina in my hand.
I feel just a bit guilty because I love post-modernist fiction and my friend said to me, "All the subsequent authors were influenced by classics, right? You need a base, right?" And I thought that was true but that still didn't get me to want to read them.
Even if I wander over to Jane Austen I find myself inevitably wandering back to more modern fiction. Maybe I think they're good, but they don't knock me over like the post-modernists do.

On a related note, I find myself always trusting recommendations from online strangers (especially on Amazon.com) than I do my friends. They don't read the stuff I do (re: above). It's been three times that I've borrowed a book from close people and I read a few pages and then went on to other things. It was the Wild Swans, and then the Time Traveler's Wife and Freakonomics I was like...uh...no. And then I was given a read copy of East of Eden for free! But then I threw it away because I thought it was dirty (the case for my hating library books). Then yesterday I found out that new copies of the books had covers like that too - the 'dirt' was part of the design of the cover, and that was my excuse for having thrown out a potentially great great book! Of course, if it had been post-modernist stuff I would've kept it. I feel so stupid.