Ted Schredd had almost too much fun writing about having fun.

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Reviewed by David Leonhardt, The Happy Guy There's a fine line between happiness and fun, a line Ted Schredd leaps over, back and forth, with almost too much glee. Mama Knows the F Word is about fun. (What did you think the "F" stands for?) Well, OK, some of the language Schredd uses is a bit coarse, so keep the book away from those with the most tender ears, but generally the book is about feeling positive and enjoying life. If you are one of those people who reads only the beginning of a book, gets distracted, puts it down, forgets about it and never picks it up to read about it again, this book is about happiness – a topic I am very familiar with from my happiness self-help book.

In fact, many of the themes Schredd addresses in the first few chapters are themes from my book (I would like to think he had read my book and was so inspired by it that he went out and wrote his own, but that may just be the optimism of a happy person thinking.)

If you are the type of person who actually reads past the first third of the book, you will find that the book is not really about happiness, but about fun. Yes, the F word. Ted has chapters on laughing, silliness, sex, chilling out, fun at home and other fun themes.

The cover sets the tone, featuring a granny in cheerleader regalia. Ted's no-nonsense writing style definitely carries that mood through the book, which is further enhanced by his own illustrations – oops, I mean his own silly illustrations. Peppered throughout the book are famous and not-so-famous quotations, which tend to be much more serious than anything else in the book.

Whenever I review a book, I look for some lasting legacy the author might leave behind, in the event that the book becomes a top seller. Ted Schredd's legacy would be "mind poo", a term his grandmother coined. Mind poo is a generic term for all the negative thinking that keeps us from having fun.

There are many books that could be considered "fun", such as books about games, comic books and humor books, but few about fun as a topic. In fact, this is the first book specifically on fun that I have ever read, and it is unquestionably the best.

Pick up Gramma Knows the F Word and have some fun.

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