I'd just finished reading some blurb about this chap Danny Wallace's new book, Yes Man, when my sister rang me. Apparently Danny had finally snapped out of a long period of social isolation and self-loathing by acquiescing to every "favour, request, suggestion and invitation", after allegedly meeting some old codger on the last bus home who sagely advised him to "Say Yes more". So he did, and his life turned around in all sorts of positive ways. Obviously a load of shite, but it's a great idea for a book, and it's selling by the truckload so good luck to him.

Last year The Irish Times was accused of misreporting news of secret meetings in 1969 between then chief executive, Major Thomas McDowell, and British diplomats. The paper said it had reported the available material when it was released in 2000. New evidence casts new light on the controversy. By Niall Meehan

The French are ditching traditional papers, such as Le Monde and Figaro, in favour of easy-to-read free-sheets. The Irish mainstream press will have to make sute the same doesn't happen here.

Last weekend's Sunday Business Post poll set the scene nicely for this week's Fine Gael parliamentary party ...

A Page in the Life is a collection of short stories written by listeners to The Marian Finucane Show about their everyday experiences. Here we reproduce three of them.

No sooner had we got used to the broad and unusually strong Man Booker longlist of 17 books, than the five judges whittled it down to a final six novels and the composition of the real race took shape. The carnage we expected before the announcement of the first list was saved for this week with neither the favourite, Ian McEwan's Saturday or the always-involved Salman Rushdie clearing the final hurdle. By hinting that these two weren't even in the final eight, the judging committee sent a message of 'not even close' to these vaunted books.

Newfoundland and Labrador have syddered much hardship, most recently the disappearance of the cod industry, a mainstay of livelihood. And yet John Gimlette's beautifully written book is neither dark nor depressing writes Elizabeth Royte

Billy Leahy looks at Philip Allen's collection of new works at the Kerlin Gallery

Daniel Swift looks at a new book that takes a tour in search of ecumenical understanding between Christianity, Islam and Judaism

Leo Enright was doing his science spot on Morning Ireland during last week's British Association's Festival of Science at Trinity College. On Friday morning his piece was on nanotechnology. "People think,'Oh nano, I understand that, it's amazing what you can squeeze onto a microchip nowadays.'" And then he yelled, building up our confidence, like. "That is NOT what we are talking about here!"