They can spell "shift?"

Does they spell it swop? Is that a Britishism?

This Time of Darkness?

Book: City of Ember?

Co-workers: depends, if it's swop that's an occasional British variation.

Ah, the pedant in me is shamed: they did indeed spell it "swop". (I still think "enrol" is just silly, though.)

Books: yeah, it's This Time of Darkness, thanks! Kronos, how'd you find it? It'll probably be one of those books that I thought was fabulous when I was 12, but at 36 will seem... well, juvenile.

City of Ember looks okay too. It was published in 2003, so I'm just going to take that suggestion as an unwitting age-related compliment from you, Theo.

your description about a post- apocalyptic character learning to read reminded me of Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban . the whole book is written phonetically, so its a bit tough to read at first, but once you get into it, its an really good read . Hoban is an amazing writer. i highly recommend him

I tried that book rollick, mostly because I loved Russell Hoban's books for kids. I just could not get over the language and had to give up...

Thank you for reminding me that I planned to check out that Hoban book!

I want to know what this underground city book is, too --- I'm trying to collect a list of stories that occur (in part or in whole) in underground places. You'd think there would be a relevant link on Wikipedia or TV Tropes or somewhere, but if there is, I ain't found it. (The Wiki list of fictional places underground, for example, doesn't include Neverwhere, which suggests that it's sadly incomplete.)

I've read This Time of Darkness as an adult and I thought it held up pretty well, to be honest.

Now you've got me thinking of a book I read...oh, probably in 1995 or 1996 with a somewhat similar premise. Underground post-nuclear fallout bunker, and a group of teens try to get out. The female main character is the babysitter for the colony and so she's also trying to take all the young kids outside as well. She has a male friend who's quirky or always asking questions or some such and he has an involuntary "treatment" from the authorities that makes him docile and slow, and everyone takes sedatives with their water to keep calm. And there's a woman in there who's a former opera singer, but the authorities took away her baby to make her go underground and she's refused to sing ever since then. The song "Here we go round the mulberry bush" is a repeated theme.

Can anyone place this?

Ah ha! Never mind! The book I'm thinking of is "I Feel Like the Morning Star" by Gregory Maguire. So there's another one for Elsa's list.

This reminded me a bit of The City and the Stars by arthur C. Clark. My copy isn't at hand to check the details though. Probably not the one you're looking for.

Nthing Riddley Walker.

I was afraid you were going to ask that.... (well, I'm semi-literate, anyway!) Your description of the book was very succinct, and a few phrases from it served well in a Google search, which pointed me to AskMe.