suggestions for classic novels..

If you have a Barnes & Noble nearby, it should have a classic fiction section (often on its own freestanding table/display. They typically have dozens of titles of books just about everyone has heard of (but hardly anyone has read!).

A few very good (English-language) ones off the top of my head:

Jude the Obscure (Hardy)
Of Human Bondage (Maugham)
A Passage to India (Forster) - or any of his other novels
Brideshead Revisited (Waugh)
The Way of All Flesh (Butler)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde)
Lady Chatterley's Lover (Lawrence)
Portrait of a Lady (James)

Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

^i can't finish this book. shit is too dense

It's the most brilliant novel ever written god damn it. James Joyce can suck it!

i never made it through any of joyce's works either

I couldn't fault you for that.

OP do you only want native English classics?

Can they be in other languages, granted great care is taken in selecting the translator?

If you are going to read Dostoevsky, I can't stress enough to AVOID that Barnes and Noble Classics shelf translated by that hack Constance Garnet, and opt for the more modern translation, specifically, Volokhonsky and Pevear.

Skip 'em.

Some I just read

East of Eden - fucking most awesome shit I've read ever. Most recommended IMO. So many wise words in every page.
The Sound and The Fury - confusing as shit but there's a lot to grasp out of it.
Picture of Dorain Gray - As suggested above, many "pretty" images and words used and a very interesting story.
Tess of D'urberville - About a chick who goes through a bunch of shit. Victorian novel which plays on the class and belief system of the day. Hardy does a damn good job and the reading flowed easily.

Generally I feel 1800-1950 European and American literature is amazing, I've never really bumped into anything astoundingly bad from any novel of notice.

Of course I am going to suggest you skip the so-called classics and instead pick up a collection of short stories if you want to read good fiction and you are not the typical bookish reader.

I recommend Push Cart Prize stories or Best American Short Stories series. Some damn good short stories are being written in North America.

U.S.A. by John dos Passos

In general anything by Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Joyce, Saul Bellow, Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner. I would give personal recommendations but pretty much everything I've read from 1910-1970 I love.

Lighter reads:

Jules Verne - Around the World in 80 Days, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness, Successful and Attractive African American of the Narcissus, Lord Jim
Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
Ambrose Bierce - any

Also definitely Mark Twain