End of an era

Saturday was the end an of era: I sold my Robert & Collins Super Senior 2 volume English-French dictionaries.

To explain why this represents an end of an era, I should explain the life those dictionaries had.

I bought them when I was a student in Montpellier and discovered the joy of good dictionaries in the library when doing translation class homework. I decided having such a resource at home would be a good investment, so I paid 70€ (35€ each) to buy the huge 2 volume set.

Then I changed apartments in Montpellier.

And I moved back to my dorm room in Massachusetts.

And back home for the summer in San Diego.

Then Foix, and finally Toulouse.

For all the moves, they were actually in really good shape. I think the fact that I spent so much money on them motivated me to keep them at every move.

But now that we've been in Toulouse for 3 1/2 years, I realized I haven't opened them much. Now I go to WordReference, which has not only a huge classic dictionary, but also all the forums where people talk about using words in real contexts. No paper dictionary could compete.

The nail in the coffin was our tax bill this fall, which got me thinking about ways I could get some cash. I started putting up books for sale on Amazon, and the dictionaries sold last Friday. Saturday afternoon I bungie corded them into my bike basket and made my way downtown to the main post office (which, btw, was a feat in and of itself because riding a bike with 5kg of books is no easy thing!). Before putting them in the Collissimo box I bought some bubble wrap at the stationary store, then sent them off to somewhere near Paris.

Happy trails, dictionaries!