Library fan's tip: Check out Sprague

There are only four books in Nina Schulz's at-home library, and the 68-year-old Danish immigrant doesn't expect that she'll buy any more

Not when there are thousands of free volumes lining the shelves of her favorite library in Sugar House, just minutes away.

Three days a week, Nina takes a tote bag to load up on everything from self-help tomes to cookbooks at Salt Lake City's Sprague branch, a Tudor jewel box that has thrived for 80 years amid the ebb and flow of unmemorable architecture.

Boring buildings have come and gone, but the Sprague Library has been a Sugar House mainstay for eight decades thanks to loyal patrons like Nina who have made the cozy haven a second home.

"You always feel like you belong as soon as you walk in," says Nina, whose library card has more than 30 years of use. "All of the librarians are more than just employees — they're neighborhood friends. They're always there with a smile, ready to help."

In celebration of the library's 80th birthday last month, Nina wanted to get together for a Free Lunch chat in the hope of encouraging others to discover the joys of "the big-city library with the small-town feel."

"We're so lucky to have this beautiful spot — I can't imagine our city without it," she says. "For anyone who loves books, it's a treasure. If there's anything on the planet that I want to read, they'll find it for me."

Nina is from Copenhagen, Denmark, where she grew up with a love for literature, eager for every Christmas and birthday when she'd get a new book.

After moving to Salt Lake City with her husband in 1964, she wandered into the Sprague Library one day and was enchanted by the English Tudor design, wooden shelves and rustic fireplace on the main floor.

Since then, Nina has become one of the library's most loyal patrons, dropping by several times a week to check out a new pile of books, mostly nonfiction. She has read every volume in the Encyclopedia Britannica collection, hundreds of autobiographies and nature books, and the entire dictionary, several times, from A to Z.

The allure of a new find is so great that after her husband died a few years ago, she gave up watching television to devote her evenings to reclining on the sofa with a book in her lap.

"With a book," she says, "you feel as though you're right there, walking with the author. It's like a friendship. You can't get that same feeling with television."