Nonfiction Monday Review: DOABLE by Deborah Reber

DOABLE cover
DOABLE: THE GIRLS’ GUIDE TO ACCOMPLISHING JUST ABOUT ANYTHING
by Deb­o­rah Reber
Beyond Words/Simon Pulse (Jan­u­ary 2015)

In this well-orga­nized, easy-to-digest non­fic­tion book for teen girls, Reber employs her train­ing as a life coach as well as her exten­sive work with teen girls to lay out an eight-step plan for read­ers to achieve what­ev­er it is they want to tack­le in life. The steps include defin­ing the goal, defend­ing against obsta­cles, devel­op­ing sup­port sys­tems, deter­min­ing what suc­cess looks like, doing the work, deal­ing with set­backs, and deliv­er­ing the goods. Each step has numer­ous exam­ples, pull­outs, jour­nal exer­cis­es, and more, and every chap­ter ends with a sum­ma­ry to rein­force the main points. Reber man­ages to do all of that while main­tain­ing a charis­ma and relata­bil­i­ty that puts read­ers at ease while at the same time empow­er­ing them, and the tone is nev­er the least bit con­de­scend­ing nor overwhelming.
I loved this book and plan to refer back to it for my own to-do list man­age­ment. In fact, my one and only quib­ble with this book is that it is tar­get­ed sole­ly at teen girls, because I think EVERYONE over the age of 10 should read this book! I think we could all learn a thing or two from it that would make us more suc­cess­ful and make our lives that much eas­i­er. That said, Reber is per­fect­ly in touch with the teen girl audi­ence, and while the core con­tent is high­ly applic­a­ble to any read­er, the voice and view­point will sure­ly be direct­ly rel­e­vant and relat­able to many teenage girls.
This book would make a great eighth grade or high school grad­u­a­tion present, and it’s a super help­ful read for any­one who wants to be more pro­duc­tive (don’t we all?). Far from being didac­tic, DOABLE instills a sense of con­fi­dence and excite­ment. Reber is a fan­tas­tic coach AND a cheer­leader, all rolled into one. High­ly recommended!

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