This fortnight on the bookish internet

• K.W. Colyard explains the old tradition of Christmas ghost stories. (Book Riot)
• You could win £300 if you can decipher Dickens’ shorthand. (BBC)
• Luke Winkie reports on a phenomena most of us could’ve predicted: turns out people really want to read books they’ve been told they shouldn’t read. (The Guardian)
• Alice Nuttall shares her favorite fictional worlds. (Book Riot)
• Letter-locking is fascinating. (Ars Technica)
• Devin Nealy shares a video about restoring hundred-year-old books. (Boing Boing)
• Alexander Chee talks about couples combining or not combining their book collections. (The Morning News)
• Sara Murphy finds out how much light we really need for reading. (Lifehacker)
• I know not everyone loves reading blistering book reviews, but I love them. This round-up is full of delightfully scathing reviews. (Book Marks)
• First it was school libraries. Now public libraries in Texas are preemptively “reviewing” books for content that might offend. (Texas Tribune)