This Is Awkward: How Life's Uncomfortable Moments Open the Door to Intimacy and Connection

In this debut, Rhodes (campus minister, Reformed Univ. Fellowship, Univ. of South Carolina) offers a pop culture-inspired rumination on his milieu. After the author crafted a name for himself as a hipster campus minister on Twitter, comedian Patton Oswald publicly accused Rhodes of plagiarism. This uncomfortable interaction became the launching point for this memoir, a self-referential apologia in which the memory of many awkward moments serves as "an invitation to vulnerability, and vulnerability is where intimacy and connection [to God] are found." Fans of Rhodes will enjoy his clever witticisms and pithy self-deprecation. He regularly references the TV series Friday Night Lights and Taylor Swift as spiritual touchstones for some of his paradoxical insights such as admitting his fear of people yet still seeking their approval and embracing the Internet for a sense of identity.