From a balcony in Assagao, the morning air carries the mingled scents of wet leaves and coastal sunblock. Scooters pause at the bend below, their riders drifting in and out of view as if they were characters stepping on and off a stage. On the railing, a pale paperback lies open, The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, its pages ruffling every time a breeze pushes through. This is where we find Ananthi Iyappan, one of Tamil Nadu’s most recognisable book voices, reading with one eye on the text and the other on the quiet theatre of people “loitering around in their own world,” as she puts it.
“I have always been fascinated with how our brain shapes or shades the world,” she says. Ananthi’s journey began long before her YouTube numbers rose. She started out as a radio jockey, talking into a mic with that unmistakable expressive energy she’s known for. “I love to talk, sing, dance,” she says. But radio also made her aware of what drained her. Talking about things that didn’t excite her started feeling like using the wrong fuel. A shift arrived through a morning infotainment show where she interviewed experts from across fields. Those conversations stretched her curiosity. “The experience significantly broadened my interests,” she says. It aligned her toward the person she would become — someone driven by deeper, wider subjects.
The Book Show, her YouTube channel, grew in the way real communities do. “The growth has been super organic,” she says. The defining moments weren’t the viral videos or the brand recognitions, though becoming Amazon’s Popular Choice Book Influencer for 2025 sits prominently on her list. What truly moved her were private exchanges — followers who wrote to say her videos had accompanied them through hard weeks, shifted their perspective, or simply added company to lonely commutes. “The one-on-one conversations with my followers truly sustain this journey with the necessary zest,” she says.
It begins with a book
Her earliest milestone is a night of doubt before releasing her review of Kamasutra. She had always been accepting of celebrated works, but something changed. She read the book closely, felt disturbed by many parts, and chose honesty over popularity. “Once it was out, I found my tribe. Later came my reviews of even some award-winning books that are still celebrated in the literary circle, but again, I dared to call them out on their misogynistic writings and objectifications of women. All the milestones that are close to my heart are those when I had shut down the voice of the world and strengthened my own,” she says.
Ananthi wasn’t a child reader but a storyteller. Her mother read school stories aloud to her, friends read textbooks while she absorbed concepts through listening. She revised by teaching imaginary audiences. The instinct stayed dormant until college, when she picked up books to keep her storytelling alive. The image of her studying by speaking to lifeless chairs makes perfect sense now. The impulse to communicate shaped her entire reading life.
Her present-day reading routine has the texture of everyday domesticity. She tries to read at least two hours a day, but without self-punishment. Cats wander around her, offering the kind of interruptions that soften the mind. “They calm me down,” she says. Sunlight is essential — she prefers it over electrical lights — so her books often sit open next to windows, curtains shifting, fur drifting in the air. On busy weeks, she switches to audiobooks, listening while painting or doing needlework. Movement, she has learned, keeps her attention steady.
That kind of balance gets harder when reading for review collides with personal taste. Ananthi enjoys unpopular books, but her audience gravitates to the trending ones. Some popular books she reads quickly just to keep pace, others she reads slowly to deliver something thoughtful. Fiction is another story; she loves it, even though it doesn’t perform well on her channel. “I still continue to read fiction for my own pleasure,” she says. She hopes her audience will see more of who she is through those videos.
A journey in genres
When asked about Tamil books for beginners, she reaches immediately for short story collections — texts that offer completeness within a chapter. She recommends Vedikkai Parpavan and Aniladum Mundril by Na Muthukumar for their poetic simplicity, Aram by Jeyamohan for its portraits of inspiring people, Marakkave Ninaikiren by Maari Selvaraj for its empathy-driven narratives, and Vattiyum Mudhalum by Raju Murugan for its sketches of everyday lives. She emphasises pacing; beginners can enter these books gently, feeling accomplished with each finished story.
Feminism is inevitably woven into her reading. “Being a woman, feminist themes are unavoidable,” she says. She recommends Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists as a clear entry point, and Tara Kaushal’s Why Men Rape as a stark exploration of patriarchal conditioning. Ananthi believes awareness is essential not only for resisting exploitation but for understanding how acceptance and social conditioning uphold patriarchal structures.
In an era of algorithms and isolated reading, she organises reading retreats that allow people to meet others who have read the same book or hold different interpretations. Ananthi struggles to choose one unforgettable moment, but offers an image instead — a night under a star-lit sky, backwaters flirting with mangroves, people discussing characters who have stayed with them. “It usually feels like a different world altogether. In-person reading and discussion shall help understand people have healthy and conflicting opinions. Also, it is a great opportunity to get book recommendations not driven by trends or algorithms,” she says.
Her favourite quotes reveal the philosophy behind her work. Quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh keep her grounded — reminders to walk lightly, to see everyday existence as miraculous. She also quotes Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove where he writes about how imperfections are personal and how we fall in love with the idiosyncrasies of the people we live with. “To love someone is like moving into a house. At first you fall in love with everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one's own, as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That's it, all the little secrets that make it your home.” Her favourite lines stay with her, reminding her to be mindful and find meaning in the imperfect edges of life. Maybe that's the message she leaves us with too.
Building a habit of reading isn’t a mark of superiority, but an exercise that makes you more creative and mindful. Ananthi, through her social media accounts, is simply reminding us to pick up a book, to flip through the pages and find quotes that resonate with you. She encourages us not to perform reading for the world, but to break the limitations that we have set upon ourselves.
(By Diya Maria George of The New Indian Express)
