A few years ago, parents faced a new worry about their children: heavy backpacks.

It seemed that orthopedic experts were growing concerned that school kids were damaging their young spines hauling around packs overloaded with textbooks.

I'm not sure if OSHA got involved in that issue, but now I'm ready to raise the alarm about adults who are facing strained muscles or damaged joints from books.

And I'm not talking about a bag of them, but just one. Books are getting longer, fatter, heavier -- and these are novels.

You'd expect that histories, biographies or reference texts might be hefty packages to lug around, but novels, something you'd like to read comfortably in bed, can bulk up, too.

The heavyweight champ of 2005 is "Hunger's Bride" by Paul Anderson (Carroll & Graf, $35). It tipped the mailroom's scales at 4 pounds, 8 ounces. With notes, it's 1,354 pages.

A resident of Canada, Anderson spent 12 years on his first book, inspired by the life of a Mexican nun, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz (1650-95). Apparently, he didn't throw anything away.

In second place was "A Breath of Snow and Ashes" by Diana Gabaidon (Delacorte, $28) at 3 pounds and 980 pages.

It's the sixth installment of "The Outlander" series featuring a 20th-century heroine who somehow winds up in 18th-century America. A photo of the smiling author shows her at Stonehenge, for some reason. Perhaps because her book is surfacing among the top 10 on best-seller lists.

"Dancing on Thorns" by Rebecca Horsfall (Ballantine Books, $23.95) finishes a close third at 2 pounds 11 ounces.

The British author said she spent 10 years laboring away on her romantic 786-page tale of young artists chasing their dreams and each other in London.

At 2 pounds, 5 ounces is "Eldest" by Christopher Paolini (Knopf, $21), the second in the Montanan's "Inheritance" series, which the publisher promises will end at the third installment.

It's a fantasy tale for young readers of 668 pages with a glossary of made-up words.

Finally there's the diminutive "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova (Little, Brown, $25.95), a mere 2 pounds, 1 ounce and 642 pages.

Dracula's role model, Vlad the Impaler, is the centerpiece of this romp around central Europe in pursuit of the vampire legend.

It's the first novel for the 40-year-old Kostova, and it enjoyed several weeks on the best-seller lists.

Gargantuan novels were the norm 150 years ago ("Moby Dick" was 760 pages), and while 20th-century novelists like Dreiser, Wolfe and O'Hara delivered doorstops, the trend has been toward downsizing.

"The Great Gatsby," for instance, was 176 pages, "Main Street" was just under 500 pages and "A Farewell to Arms" was 304.

Yet today, despite competition from the electronic and digital worlds, old-fashioned fat fiction has not disappeared.

The latter-day Tom Wolfe emulated his 1930s counterpart with the 688-page "I Am Charlotte Simmons" last year, though falling far short of David Foster Wallace's 1,088-page effort, "Infinite Jest," in 1997.

Perhaps we should find it encouraging that publishers continue to invest in long books.

Carroll & Graf's Philip Turner explained to The New York Times why he published "Hunger's Brides":

"The size implies a certain audacity, especially since we are living in the age of the sound bite. But we figured, why not publish the apotheosis of the big novel?"

It's hard to believe, though, that Carroll & Graf will profit from its nearly 5 pounds of apotheosis. The $35 price is formidable enough, but then there are the shipping charges for those buying online.

What about reviews? Not a lot of critics want to be bothered with a 1,354-page novel when they could read two or three books in the same time.

"Hunger's Brides" hit stores Sept. 14, and so far I've found only two reviews of it. That number doesn't sell too many books.

Then, there's the other question: What's happened to editing?

To save money these days, publishing houses have trimmed their editors, and its effects are showing up in the growing number of bloated, error-filled books.

The fact is, when it comes to novels, you can't judge a book by the pound.