The Cherwell and Avon Book Group for Bath-based Oxford University alumni was founded by Deborah Collins, Anna Sabine-Newlyn and James Ellis. The first gathering was in May 2017 and the group has been meeting every month (ish) since. James stepped back from being an active member of the group in May 2022.

Books read during James’s time as a member:

• “Slade House” by David Mitchell
• “Harriet” by Elizabeth Jenkins
• “A Net for Small Fishes” by Lucy Jago
• “Three Daughters of Eve” by Elif Shafak
• “Take Nothing With You” by Patrick Gale
• “Winter Street” by Elin Hilderbrand
• “Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke
• “Standard Deviation” by Katherine Heiny
• “Mutiny” by Lindsey Collen
• “A Month in the Country” by J L Carr
• “Cry, the Beloved Country” by Alan Paton
• “The Muse” by Jessie Burton
• “The Ballad of Peckham Rye” by Muriel Spark
• “Hangsaman” by ShirleyJackson
• “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens
• “The Most Fun We Ever Had” by Claire Lombardo
• “The Accidental Tourist” by Anne Tyler
• “The House in Paris” by Elizabeth Bowen
• “The Past” by Tessa Hadley
• “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr
• “Overstory” by Richard Powers
• “The Porpoise” by Mark Haddon
• “From a Low and Quiet Sea” by Donal Ryan
• “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson
• “One on One” by Craig Brown
• “A God in Ruins” by Kate Atkinson
• “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid
• “Map of the Invisible World” by Tash Aw
• “Winter” by Ali Smith
• “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles
• “Ghost Wall” by Sarah Moss
• “Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders
• “Happenstance” by Carol Shields
• “The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” by Stuart Turton
• “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville
• “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine” by Gail Honeyman
• “Exposure” by Helen Dunmore
• “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante
• “Super Sad True Love Story” by Gary Shteyngart
• “Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border” by Colm Tóibín
• “The Wife” by Meg Wolitzer
• “We Need to Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver
• “A Perfectly Good Man” by Patrick Gale
• “I Burn Paris” by Bruno Jasieński
• “At Freddie’s” by Penelope Fitzgerald
• “Dead Souls” by Nikolay Gogol
• “A Very British Scandal” by John Preston
• “The Good People” by Hannah Kent
• “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” by Neil Gaiman
• “A Country Road, A Tree” by Jo Baker
• “Different Class” by Joanne Harris
• “Hag Seed” by Margaret Atwood
• “The Reader on the 6.27” by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent