THE LEFT LANE
Asian chart toppers

Nearly 12 million Americans reported in the Census 2000 that they were at least part Asian, and in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, which began yesterday, the U.S. Census Bureau has highlighted Hawai'i as the state with the highest percentage of Asians in the country. Here, 58 percent of those who answered the census survey reported they were of Asian heritage. California was next, with 12 percent.

Honolulu led the nation in cities of 100,000 or more residents with the highest percentage of Asians, with 68 percent. Among cities of that size, the only other that had more than one-half of its population reporting as Asian was Daly City, Calif. (54 percent). All of the remaining cities among the 10 with the highest percentage of Asians in their population were in California: Fremont, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, Irvine, Garden Grove, Santa Clara, Torrance and San Jose.

Have a pressing need to know the names of Hawai'i's major waterfalls by island? Perhaps you'd like to drop into conversation the number of cargo ship arrivals in Honolulu last year, and the tonnage totals? Or perhaps you'd like to know how many of the couples who were married here last year married people of the same race?

If arcane facts come in handy in your work or you're planning to win "Jan Ken Po" this year, your best friend is the new "Hawai'i Data Book, A Statistical Reference to Hawai'i's Social, Economic and Political Trends," edited by the state's longtime king of facts, statistician Robert C. Schmitt. Mutual Publishing has released the book in a handy paperback desk size at $13.95.

RIPA

Nothing worth reading out there, huh, Oprah? Kelly Ripa, USA Today and the "Today" show beg to differ.

A recommendation last Thursday from the co-host of "Live With Regis & Kelly" has made an instant best seller out of "If Looks Could Kill," a murder mystery by Cosmopolitan Editor in Chief Kate White, who sent Ripa a gushing thank-you note.

Meanwhile, USA Today has helped sales of Richard Russo's "Empire Falls." In mid-April, the newspaper made Russo's novel its debut book club pick, just days after Russo won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and after the paperback edition was released.

The "Today" show has also formed a book club, to start in June.