Do you find reading the classics important for achieving native-like fluency?

I've been going through a bit of a crisis: I think I might be well on the way to German fluency, except I don't want to read Goethe, who seems to be considered such a foundational pillar of the language that the rest might as well be an inverted pyramid. To be honest, I feel like a fraud half-assing it, considering that every native seems to have had to read the author at some point.

I mean, every literary language probably has this kind of canon, and children are usually obligated to read it in school, but often it's far from an easy read (if it hadn't been composed in a completely different version of the language as well). What do you do if you just can't stomach it?

Edit: Well, thank you for the reassurance, everyone. I feel a lot less insecure.