It is incredibly hard to get a good grasp of the consensus in a literature as a non-expert just by searching Google Scholar. People spend years in graduate school to learn to do that.
Are there reputable journals or conference proceedings that you specifically recommend reading for high-quality literature reviews?
There's nothing you're going to read, with or without trustworthy standards, that is going to enable you to design safe novel applications of cryptography. Encrypting a file, setting up a secure transport, and (if you're extraordinarily careful and do a lot of reading) exchanging secure messages are all within reach without anything resembling postgraduate education.
I got a lot of mileage out of attending IACR in person. Lots of amazing content there every time. A lot of it is addressable even if you aren't going to do the math.
Are there reputable journals or conference proceedings that you specifically recommend reading for high-quality literature reviews?