What can I say about Les Miz that hasn't already been said? The image that has never left me was that of the street urchins huddling inside of the statue of an elephant, eating and trying to stay warm. I read the unabridged version only once, about twenty years ago, so this particular memory of it may be inaccurate. If so, forgive me. But that is one of the images that has remained with me the most, "real" or unreal. It illicited a sense of adventure, a sense of history, injustice and the near-futile desire to carry on and prosper in the face of indifference and seemingly insurmountable odds. Hugo walks the streets still, if only in the memory of romantics such as I! haha!