Lit review progress

Here's something I struggle with: Skimming. Most people I have heard talk about literature review advocate a plan of skimming and diving deep -- gloss over some literature and delve into other literature with more depth. I struggle with this because I feel that if I cite an article that I haven't read in its entirety, it is tantamount to cheating. In high school, a teacher could tell if you didn't read the material -- you would draw false conclusions, give inaccurate descriptions. You'd get a talking to. I got accused of watching the movie of a book rather than reading it for one of my undergrad courses and had to meet with the professor after class. (It turned out the professor had not read the book in a decade, so he was mistaken in his memory of certain things.)

I understand it's pretty accepted practice to skim articles. It just doesn't feel right. Most of the time in graduate school, we only manage to get the cliff notes version of so much we read because there is too much information to really devour in our allotted time. And then we have to waste it reading stuff by B.F. Skinner!

Imagine your line of research. You're tapping back through generations of scholars, few of whom have actually read what the previous scholars have actually done. Standing on the shoulders of who knows what.

I'm not saying I've never skimmed. I'm just saying I find it hard to do. If I skim something, I don't feel educated about it. I don't feel I can make good commentary about it. I don't feel I can cite it to build a case for my research.

Bottom line -- my literature review process goes really slowly and I get frustrated quickly.