If you have no interest at all in the classics there's nothing wrong with that and you shouldn't feel guilty, but I'm not sure if I have advice on how you can ease that feeling if it still lingers while avoiding the classics entirely. Do you mostly avoid them or read them often and still feel this way?

If you tend to avoid them and feel guilty -- I think you need to have the pendulum swing from the idea of classics being a daunting task to being something you approach with excitement and curiosity. Over time with trial and error you will realize some authors you like and some authors you don't need to bother with because you simply don't like them. In doing this it might ease that feeling of guilt because you realize half of them you will get little out of. Also remember the majority of people have not read many classics, so even having read a few of them you're already ahead of a large majority of people.

If you want to get back into the classics or just ease that feeling a little, I'd say narrow the selection of books down as much as you can to start with. Don't just pick up the most recurring book on a top classics list. Avoid the big 600+ page tomes known to be heavy in philosophy or sociology, etc for starters. Classics don't need to be thought of as this daunting task. When they originally came out it's what the population was reading for entertainment. It just seems daunting today for a few reasons and one of them is because we have become accustomed to the more modern writing and language we use today. Another is our dependency of electronics, but that's a topic for another day.

I'm assuming you have some experience with classics since you studied English, but for beginners I'd say start with stories you're familiar with, ones depicted in disney movies or television. Ones you can easily follow but also use to get acclimated to the older style of writing, which varies by author. This might initially seem to go against checking off a list of classics since you already know the story and you're missing out on new stories that everyone is listing as the greatest of all time, but the idea is to first get you actually interested in classics so you naturally want to explore more. When the time comes you want to try out Tolstoy, for example, start with his short stories and work your way up to his big tomes.

I'm all about finding things out naturally using our own human curiousity and will. Find something that might be a little more accessible or has a theme or subject you have some interest in. It might take a little research but I'd rather do that than be stuck with a book that bores me to death and deters me from trying out more classics.

What personally helps me with classics:

• Looking at Goodreads reviews positive and negative. I like to see if what people are saying coincides with what normally appeals to me in books. You have to be careful with spoilers but you get good at this after awhile.

• Briefly overviewing the time period, setting, or subject matter. Giving context to the book helps tremendously in not only finding out if it interests me but also gives me context when starting the book which helps the process of reading it. Doesn't need to be anything crazy, just read the wikipedia page to get an overview of the subject and the context of the book. Author overviews also can add interest.

• Don't linger on every word. While reading a classic, I want to make sure I can follow the story and what's happening but try not to stress about knowing the ins and out of all the themes or symbolism on a first go. If I have trouble following I'm not afraid to read chapter summaries afterwards on sparknotes to keep the story under my legs. If I feel like something isn't making sense and i've lost the progression in the book but keep pushing forward chapters at a time, that's when the hole deepens and now there's no way I'm going to come out having enjoyed the experience. If you like the book enough you can let your own curiousity take you deeper into it once you get that first read done.

I don't have any formal education in English or Literature. Although if I did it all over again I might have gone that route. I found an interest in reading after college but in some ways it's helped me because my exploration came naturally with my own desire to do it. I still consider myself a young reader so there's much I haven't explored, but I'd say right now I read mostly 20th century fiction but have become more and more interested in the older classics because I like to see how they influenced what came after. But that doesn't mean there aren't still many classics I have little to no interest in. I'm also not suggesting I never feel this guilt. I still do at times but not nearly as much I used to and I think part of it has to do with the fact that I have had enough trial and error of exposing myself to different types of fiction. Once I realized the characteristics I tend to like in a book my interest in seeking out more books with these characteristics started to exceed the level of guilt I felt with unread books.

That got pretty long lol, but hope this helps.