A little light reading? Forget that

It’s a summer when, between the massive new Harry Potter and John Irving’s 800-plus-page opus, a trip to the beach with novel in tow might require some heavy lifting. The big books of summer are upon us. Big as in weighty -- we’re talking poundage, not the latest pretender to the James Joyce crown.

Scale in hand, we dropped into the Borders in Canoga Park to size up the season’s fiction heavyweights. A cursory sample turned up these stats:

John Irving, “Until I Find You� (Random House). 848 pp. 2.9 lbs.

William T. Vollmann, “Europe Central� (Viking). 832 pp. 2.74 lbs.

Charles Chadwick, “It’s All Right Now� (HarperCollins). 688 pp. 2.73 lbs.

J.K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince� (Arthur A. Levine Books). 652 pp. 2.4 lbs.

Elizabeth Kostova, “The Historian� (Little, Brown). 656 pp. 2.1 lbs.

Mark Helperin, “Freddy and Fredericka� (The Penguin Press HC). 576 pp. 1.14 lbs.

Wesley Stace, “Misfortune� (Little, Brown). 544 pp. 1.12 lbs.

Of course, nothing new compares with Neal Stephenson’s 2003 963-page novel, “Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)� (William Morrow), which clocked in at a mighty 3.4 lbs.

Don’t expect relief if your tastes run to nonfiction. Several new American history releases tip the scale in the 2-pound range.

Is more more? Readers seem to think so. Irving, Kostova and Rowling, at least, are matching mega-size with mega-sales.

-- Casey Dolan