Why am I passionate about this?
I’m a woman in a technology field dominated by men, a person with both mental and physical problems, and I’ve studied a dozen different martial arts. I’m a mean shot with a bow and love to hurl axes and spears. None of these things are contradictory. They’re just different aspects of me. Real people don’t fit in boxes and neither should good characters. My world is filled with my Hispanic grandkids, my bi daughter, my gay foster brother, my friends and family and people I love that don’t fit the Captain Awesome stereotype. Remember that we, too, can be heroes.
Paige's book list on sci-fi that blow raspberries at hero stereotypes
Why did Paige love this book?
I know I made a big jump from a modern sci-fi series to classic fantasy, but when I was a skinny, anemic 10-year-old kid, Bilbo Baggins, a hero who was three feet tall and liked good food, was the first time I genuinely identified with a fantasy hero.
Heroes are always these big, strong, aggressive men. I love Marvel movies, so I think of Steve Rogers, Captain America. Bilbo Baggins broke that mold so far it shattered in a million pieces. Some people forget that even Captain America started out as a small guy with poor hearing and some major health problems.
As someone who was a small person with health issues, I never forgot. Compassion, determination, and courage make a hero, and even little guys can have that.
40 authors picked The Hobbit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Special collector's film tie-in hardback of the best-selling classic, featuring the complete story with a sumptuous cover design inspired by THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY and brand new reproductions of all the drawings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End.
But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey 'there and back again'. They have a plot to raid…