Papa was a rolling stone

At the moment I'm reading Régimódi történet (An Old-fashioned Story) by Magda Szabó, and it's quite compelling, I use every spare moment to glimpse in it. It's the story of her mother, and the reason I started it is that it was mentioned in Mézescsók Cerberusnak, which I had read about two weeks ago. Actually it's a bit irritating when someone keeps referring back to another book, especially if that was written by herself. It suggests that she believes we have read all of her books, and I haven't done it with anybody so far, not even with Shakespeare.
Another thing that is a bit too much for me is the way the author keeps boasting about her family. She keeps enumerating the prominent ancestors, religious leaders, literary people, tracing back their lineage to the seven tribes, and so on. She also exaggerates the beauty and importance of Debrecen, where she (and her parents) grew up. Of course I'm not saying that Debrecen doesn't deserve praise as it indeed used to be an important educational, political and literary center. After a while I just grow tired of reading how everything related to her was so splendid, especially her mother, who is depicted as a world-class beauty, a natural dancer and swimmer, a pianist genius, and an imaginative writer, the pride of her grandmother and of the town, and so on. Perhaps such people did do exist after all, but the whole description is too biased for me.
Actually I cannot decide what I'm reading. It doesn't sound like a novel, rather a biography. But there's too much background provided at the beginning, such as the thorough geographical, historical, and spiritual description of the scene (focusing on Békés and Hajdúság). The story/biography of Jablonczay Lenke, the mother, starts around page 190. Before that we are reading about her parents and grandparents, and the events that led to her parents' marriage. (It might be termed a saga or a genealogy, let's not get carried away by terminology.)
I think what I am compelled by is the "story" itself, even if it wasn't created by the author. For me real-life stories are often much more interesting than fictious ones (you know, fact is always stranger than ficition). By the time I had got to the marriage of Lenke's parents and especially the part in which her grandmother took her away from them, I saw why we needed this long evocation. I must say it moved me. Kálmán Junior, Lenke's father (the grandfather of Magda Szabó) was what we call lumpen (a carouser) after German. He was both a womanizer and a gambler, and that crucially influenced the life of everyone in his family. His wife, Emma, on the other hand, was a Madame Bovary, a lover of romance and social life. Their story is indeed similar to that of a 19th-century novel, but here we are focusing on the consequences regarding Lenke's lot.
Right now I'm around page 300, and Lenke is around 18 if I remember correctly, and there are about 200 pages to go. I'm quite curious about Lenke's "future" now, although there have been some hints placed in the book considering her two marriages.
Another way in which this book influenced me is that now I really would like to find out more about my grandparents, and perhaps even write about them. Curious thing it is, that every family has a unique (or even notorious) character, for example I've been told many times that one of my great-grandmothers was a gypsy princess, though I'm not sure what that means. I even started to think about what my children could write about me in the future. For example, am I also a wanton for having extra/premarital sex? (Okay, in that case wantonness would be much more frequent nowadays than it used to be in the times of Lenke's mother, but it might be a valid aspect after all.) I would like my children to be able to say that I wanted and loved them. In addition, they may say I was domestic (though more so regarding cooking than housework), perseverant (have to work on it), and cultured. Obviously I wouldn't want them to lie to themselves or to their readers, but I do really hope I can suggest and pass these values. (Perhaps I'm too self-important as well, just like Szabó.)