lilbuddy - It may not be a novel but this looks like a fun book.

i dig italians.. italo calvino, "invisiblie cities" & umberto eco "foucault's pendulum" i read last summer after coming home from italy. not about architecture per se, but always seem to be on architect's reading lists. i think anything by those two would be good though.

my one attempt to read dan brown made me want to punch somebody in the face.

Dan Brown. Paging Dan Brown to the drawing board...

If you enjoyed "The Fountainhead's: drivel, you'll just love
"Atlas Shrugged", especially the 200page sentence. Drugs.

Sorry, I forgot to credit the quotation of "Drugs" to Charlie Sheen.

Fountainhead............ UGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRR. I HATE AYN RAND! THAT STUPID OBJECTIVIST BITCH!!!!!! I read the fountain head to make sure that I am not yelling about things I do not know, and then I gave the book to GoodWill. Take that Rand!

Cradle to Cradle.....not necessarily a novel but every Architect and aspiring must be aware of the Design and Ecological ideas prescribed in this book!

devil in the white city

i second devil in the white city. i am currently about 1/3 thru. its a page turner.

Just getting stuck into 'The Most Beautiful House in the World' (0140105662) which, again, isn't a novel. It's a holiday-worthy paperwork, about an architecture academic's adventure in building his own house, interspersed with excellent digressions into architectural theories and the history of civilisation.
I only had time to read two chapters but, judging by the folk who've recommended it to me, my initial impressions of it being a great read are correct! It's published by Penguin, and I think it might be easier to obtain in the US than over here in the UK.

Douglas Cooper's "Amnesia" and "Delirium"

'delerium' just pissed me off. pretentious and intentionally obscurant. i'd send you my copy if i hadn't already dumped it at the book/cd exchange.

in general i think novels about architects are bound to disappoint architects. not because they're bad novels, necessarily, but because we expect it to resonate too much with our experience.

that said:

a good cheesy trash novel about an architect, 'native stone', is a potboiler that rips off 'fountainhead'.

michael pollan's book about building his writing cabin is entertaining. be aware that he's a magazine contributor normally and this reads like an extended article.

douglas hobbie's 'the day' is only incidentally about an architect, more about his relationship with his family and his inner life over the course of - one day.

meyer levin's 'the architect' is pretty light reading, ostensibly a novelization of the life of wright with the names changed.

'house' by tracy kidder is not fiction, but it is the story of the construction of a house told from kind of a sociological p.o.v.

best bet may be to skip the novels altogether, read some of the nonfiction recommendations that others have offered above, or: 'no place like utopia' by peter blake, 'from bauhaus to our house' by tom wolfe, 'the seduction of place' by joseph rykwert, 'clearing in the distance' by rybczinski...

or, for good novels that an architect-type might find interesting: anything by eco, 'you shall know our velocity' by eggers, 'the corrections' by franzen, 'the reader' by ?, 'repetition' by robbe-grillet, 'babel tower' by byatt, 'midnight's children' by rushdie, 'a winter's tale' by helprin...

i second Calvino's "Invisible Cities." especially for traveling.

may i suggest
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v641/notmirella/080652569X.jpg" alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">
written by a 9 year old.
it is hilacious.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v641/notmirella/080652569X.jpg" alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">

phew!

what it has to do with architecture you say........... jack shit.

but you should read it because overspecialization breeds weakness.

it does seriously

i know at least 2 friends of a friend that actually died from this.

not that i read the whole thing, but you could look up:
Artificial Love
A Story of Machines and Architecture
by Paul Shepheard
it's more like creative non-fiction--
he also has a couple of other books that are more essay-like as well.

Thanks guys. Yes, I love Eco and Calvino (well, most).

Forcing myself to finish The Fountainhead. Ugh.

Looking forward to starting on the suggestions.

les pierres suavage - by Fernand Pouillon
don't know where to find a copy in english - but its a well written novel about a cistertian(?) monk and the building of his monastary - the author was /is an arcitect

artificial Love by Paul shepheard -

also check out Georges Didi- huberman

conversationkiller,

This book looks swwweeettt. Do you remember Sho Kasugi? I idolized him when I was growing up. I desparately begged my parents to let me go to his ninja camp in japan. Instead, I got to go to the crummy Pele's Cosmos camp. c'est la vie!

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd

...very glad to feel the general abhorrence for fountainhead...