You probably also have a good public library or school library near you. Use it and get to know your librarian. Librarians love to help, and they love it when their patrons are excited about books. They probably have tons of recommendations for great books to read. Nearly every language has its own oral or written literary tradition.
Literary criticism is an attempt to understand literature and what it means.
One of the first Western critics was Aristotle. In his work, Poetics , he attempted to define some characteristics of literature and to determine which characteristics were common to which types of literature. Poetics was essentially a work of classification, a kind of cookbook that identifies the main ingredients of a great story. He defined the elements of tragedy, comedy, and the like. Most of his observations dealt with poetry and theatre, but can be applied to other genres and forms as well.