Book Nook: 'Unplugged: How to Live Mindfully in a Digital World' review

Unplugged: How to Live Mindfully in a Digital World, by Orianna Fielding. Carlton Books, 176 pp., $14.95.

Are you on "digital overload"? Do you check your device first thing in the morning, or even during the night? Do you slip away from people to check it, or, even worse, ignore your dinner companions to get updates on your "friends"?

Do you find each member of your family busy with his or her own device, rather than being with each other? Do you put your baby or toddler in front of a screen so you can interact with yours?

Then you might need this book by Orianna Fielding, a British designer, author, broadcaster, curator and retailer, who found that, despite living on the beautiful coast of northern Spain, her increasing dependence on the digital was strangling her real life.

Fielding presents "8 positive steps for families to reconnect with each other" (don't "listen" and scan for emails at the same time), "6 steps to unitasking at work," 16 ways to "embrace the art of slow," "8 mindful steps to bring you back to yourself" ("Get out more. See a tree."), "10 digital detox prep steps" -- including using "pen and paper (radical but necessary)."

THE SCOOP Would you give anything, she writes, "to actually go and visit the people and places you love, in person? . . . Choose life now."

THE BOTTOM LINE "Unplugged," with its beautiful design, can grace your coffee table. Where it'll be a good reminder.