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Phillip Jennings signs copies of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War at Third Place tonight. And Susannah Charleson reads from Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search and Rescue Dog at Elliott Bay Book Company, too.

But there's only one reading of the night tonight, and that's Elaine Pagels at Seattle Arts and Lectures. My outgoing intern, J.T. Oldfield, interviewed Pagels for this week's book section. They talked about a ton of different things, including priestly celibacy and whether the gnostic gospels should be taken literally. Here's a taste:

A lot of the Secret Gospels have been taken literally—Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene and things like that—but a lot of scholars believe that they’re metaphorical. Does that shed new light on how we view the traditional Gospels—whether they should be taken literally or as metaphor? Is metaphor maybe the style of writing in general from that time?

Well, I’d say that taking them literally is an odd thing to do anyway because these are texts about faith and they’re about mystery—all of them, really. But the New Testament Gospels are telling narrative stories and accounts that are in kind of a historical form, even though they’re not really histories because they’re more like religious tracts. But the other Gospels, as you say, are much more obviously symbolic, because they tend to be mystical, like Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of Philip is seen as a manifestation of divine wisdom or the Holy Spirit, which were imaged in feminine terms. So those are really clear about the metaphorical meaning of these terms.

Read the whole, great interview here. Oldfield's blog is here, and you should read it.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.