I have the same problem as you, mokey! I'm really glad I read this thread — some of these tips look really useful.

yes, of course some people gossip inappropriately, just as others favour rudeness over reason. However, in the world I live in, some people do appear to grasp the difference between gossiping about something trivial, such as who's dating whom, and breaking a confidence such as ... well, that'd be telling Surely it's just a matter of deciding who you can trust? That aside, I hope the OP finds a solution that he or she is happy with.

I normally read on screen rather than print out, but what I do is skim the paper to see if it's relevant. If it is I add it to RefWorks, archive a copy as a PDF, then read the paper through, posting a brief summary to my blog before I forget what it was about. If it really is just a summary, I sometimes make it a public post but if the summary contains some ideas, I tend to make it a private post. Mainly because I'm still in the early stages and I live in hope that my thoughts will turn out to be important later

I'm a couple of months in as a part-timer and feel just the same. What I've been doing for the last month is writing a summary of every relevant paper I read. I find it helps, and I don't feel quite as much of a slacker as I did a few weeks ago

I think you have a responsibility to both yourself and the university to make sure someone is aware, just in case you're taken ill on the premises. I can understand that you don't want it to affect your relationship with your supervisor, but perhaps it would be easier to tell someone else in the department in confidence (e.g. the postgraduate tutor, if that person is not your supervisor, or the person responsible for First Aid in your area).