where and how to start reading on any topic

well how do people know what scholars and what texts to read right away?

Jun 28, 2025

there i was, at the end of my three years bachelor’s degree in English language and literature, done through distance mode, trying to figure out how to write a 20 page dissertation. Now the thing with distance mode is that you won’t get much guidance, or if you studied at the uni I studied, none at all. Nor does your work get any attention, your dissertation is merely a paper that might as well be a wikipedia entry on the topic (you have to follow the guidelines, spacing ofc). I had this intense fervor and idiotic ambition to do research on my own. Well that is all I had with me, I really wanted to write something original, some original argument on an original topic. I knew that it’d be better to take a specific text and analyse it through some specific lens (how i knew this, i still don’t know). I chose a text, a novel called The Blind Lady’s Descendants by Anees Salim, an Indian, Keralan author whose writing I am a sucker for. I was especially interested in the honest and intimate portrayal of muslim lives in the novel. The author’s atheistic sarcasm about religious practices and actual muslim lives were funny but honest.

Y’all should read Anees Salim. You must. He is good.

Okay back to the point.

Despite having high ambitions, as I said, I didn’t have much people to ask or institutional support to understand how to actually start reading on my topic, heck I didn’t know that it was called literature review. My dissertation, as a result, even though not lacking in ambitions, lacked in any depth at all, there was no theoretical framework, no mention of important scholars and their valuable points, just me free riding my interpretation of the novel by quoting long passages from the text and whatever I could find about the author on google, including his interviews.

It seemed like I was trying to reinvent the wheel and if i had stayed on that path, i would have probably had to live a hundred thousand lifetimes to learn how to do a literature review. Alhamdulillah, Allah showed me a way out during my Masters at Jamia Millia Islamia, where I got a significantly better academic environment along with some wonderful mentors. Shout out to Prof. Nishat Zaidi and Aishwarya Sir (love you guys, Allah yahfadhkum).

Thus, this is my attempt to pass down whatever general rules I have understood about literature review when you are doing a research project of any scale, or even when you are trying to learn in depth about a specific topic. This will be followed by my current process as of 28th June 2025 (dated process because tech, especially AI is involved and I try to keep up with better tools (a guy has got to have a hobby) )

to learn is to be on the path of adab, to learn how to learn is the first step of it, read my foundational essay to know about the philosophical roots of my programme

Adab in Academia: From Episteme to Everyday

Zaki Hamdan RN

Apr 5

Read full story

Basic and General Rules about Lit Review

The first and foremost thing one has to understand is, why is one doing a lit review.

As I mentioned in my previous letter about How to Actually Start Writing Academically and be a Critical Thinker, I mention how in the book They Say I Say, it is emphasized that in order to start writing we have to listen first to what others are saying. We have to know what they (everyone in the world other than you, maybe everyone in the world who is got a good point about a specific topic) are saying. And how we find them and what they are saying is basically what a literature review is all about.

There are three parts to doing a good literature review, and each part is as important as the other. I’ll explain. These important parts are:

Finding a damn good source.
Organising the damn good source.
Reading and Retaining the damn good source.

Finding a damn good source.
Now, the thing here is, I can tell you where to find a damn good source (yes, I am sticking to it, too late to back out). But more important is how do you build up on that one absolutely damn good source and find more of em. Some of the very basic places you must know and can start searching are Google Scholar, JSTOR, Taylor and Francis and a couple of others, but these databases will soon be obsolete and will give way to AI chatbots trained on them. I would suggest Perplexity AI. A good initial source, if it’s good enough, whether it be a monograph on the topic, a detailed and well researched paper or sometimes even a university syllabus on the topic will be more than enough to start with. Since in academic writing one has to do a literature review, chances are that people who have already written stuff in the field has already done good literature reviews and summarised them in their introductions and referred through out their works, and that’s great, because now you have most of your work done by other people. This is where you start. Your next step is to follow the references and build a library for the topic.
Organising the damn good source.
Getting the best reading list or references out there is only one third of your process, what will turn this into something you can actually use is organisation. Use Zotero or other reference management software to save, collect and organise the files that you have found through the first step by keeping them into relevant folders and subfolders. Why I recommend Zotero is that it is free, you can organise stuff easily and you can highlight, annotate and take notes within it, which is very crucial in to the final part of the process, plus, and this makes my life a lot easier Alhamdulillah, when you are writing Zotero automates your citations and bibliography (no more manual labour there).
Reading and Retaining the damn good source.
There is absolutely no point in hoarding good literature on a topic if you do not actually read it. Make a plan, Block your time, go through the list one by one patiently, remember Allah and begin reading from an end. Do not just read, rather highlight, annotate and take notes. Highlight parts you think will help you later when you are going to skim through it again. Highlight and annotate parts where you had a good thought related to it and connects to your argument, this will come in handy when writing. Take notes to summarise the reading so that the next time you look at the document, maybe after months, you will be able to get right back in.

Now below is my personal process at the moment (it is a gpt generated summary of a lecture I recently gave):

📚 Zaki Hamdan’s Literature Review Process – In 6 Steps as of 28/06/2025

Start with a Broad Search Using Perplexity,
→ Begin by honestly prompting Perplexity with your research focus. Ask for key academic sources (books, articles, etc.) to identify foundational texts and get an overview of the field.
Gather and Store Sources with Zotero
→ Save the sources you find (including PDFs) into Zotero using the browser connector. Organize them in clearly named collections for easy access.
Read, Highlight, and Annotate Actively
→ Open your saved texts in Zotero, read introductions and conclusions, highlight important passages, and annotate with your thoughts and how the content relates to your topic.
Expand Through Reference Mining
→ Use bibliographies and citations within core texts to discover more relevant literature. Keep collecting and organizing these into Zotero.
Limit Your Scope According to Purpose
→ Based on whether you’re writing a short paper, article, or a PhD thesis, decide how much literature you need to cover. Don’t get stuck in endless reading.
Recall and Use Notes During Writing
→ When writing, refer back to Zotero highlights and annotations under relevant headings. Use citations directly from Zotero. Optionally, transfer notes to Obsidian for tagging, linking, and long-term knowledge building.