For avid genealogical readers or wannabe family history writers, Alice Munro's latest -- The View from Castle Rock -- is a must-read. Featuring a series of short stories based on her family history, she makes it clear up front that much is imagined. She's very open about having taken liberties and inventing tales, but if you deliberately look, you can see the backbone of her research underneath. I even went so far as to poke around some records to see if I could verify any events, places and dates -- and I could!
Not that we all need to aspire to write at Munro's level -- or anywhere near it -- but this is a good book to snag if you're thinking of putting some of your family stories down on paper. And if you've got Scotland-to-Canada roots like Munro, you'll be all the more fascinated.