MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Public Library has a long way to go before it can afford to replace all the shelves in its 1960s-era library.

“We’ve had some hiccups in the work,” said Moses Lake Foundation Director Tim Fuhrman.

Fuhrman explained to a fairly good-sized crowd at Frontier Middle School on Saturday at the Bagels for Books fundraiser that workers discovered the backs of the bookshelves along the far walls also act as the ventilator shafts for the library’s HVAC system.

So, replacing the shelves also means putting in proper ventilating shafts, adding about $12,000 to the cost of the repair work.

“The whole project is estimated at around $100,000,” Fuhrman said. “We’ve raised around $30,000, and we need $70,000.”

“That’s a lot of bagels!” someone in the audience shouted.

But that’s why folks were gathered at Frontier on a Saturday morning, to help the library raise funds for its shelving project. Local authors gathered to show off their books — everything from Gothic horror to fairy tales — kids gathered to sing, and people gathered to talk, listen to the music, and eat bagels.

“These are all archaeological thrillers set in my home country,” said Nadia Reimer, a former language teacher who emigrated to the United States from Jordan nearly 40 years ago and whose book, “Colored Sand,” has been used in schools in Spokane and Seattle.

In addition, Reimer had a volume of her own poetry in English, Spanish, and Arabic.

“I do this to present another image of a part of the world that is often maligned in the media,” she said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at [email protected]