Meantime, I’ve noticed that the audio podcast feed does include alerts to new video episodes, as text (“news”) items. I hadn’t twigged before because DoggCatcher only uses the Android notification system to draw attention to new audio or video media content, not text items. And I found it hard to launch the video episodes from the text alerts. My Pipes based system comes far closer to a normal podcast experience.

And I’m sure I can get a lot more than 5 hours out of my Note reading a eBook. Even with heavy use I can start with 100% battery in the mornings and still have about 50% by the time I plug it back in at night. It takes something fairly extreme like 3 hours continuous video to make an appreciable dent in the battery life.

Kindle for Android features: http://goo.gl/wFRC

The main benefit of this design is that it protects the screen while hardly bulking up the phone at all. The Note still feels slim compared with my previous phone, the Galaxy S, which was thicker to begin with and then encumbered with a luxurious but bulky Krusell leather case.

Pandora’s Star will definitely be my next PFH. I realised not long after starting The Dreaming Void (presently mothballed) that I should have read the earlier series first.

For the record, I did get something out of Fallen Dragon and am glad I read it. It has a lot of good things in it but is marred by a lot of unnecessary verbiage (protracted flashbacks, technical outpourings about terraforming, etc) and some issues with style. Slimmer and slicker would have made for a more enjoyable read.

If you read more Hamilton, read Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained. They are (so far) the best Hamilton books I have read. Only read The Dreaming Void is you have a large amount of patience.. the good parts are few and far between, but I still enjoyed it overall.

I will give Banks a whirl, after finishing up my free e-book “Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 – 5)” which got some astonishingly good ratings on Amazon.

I will probably read more Hamilton but find him a bit dry. Fallen Dragon was a bit “laddish” and lacked humour. PFH must have done a ton of research on, for example, terra-forming but his exposition made it all a bit dull. He also clearly has ideas on politics and commercial enterprise but that came out a bit worthy too.

Against that he did come up with some genuine strong ideas, e.g. about alternatives paths for human development, particularly the Santa Chico episode.

I had thought PFH might be a comparable alternative to say Iain M Banks. I had read and (mostly) liked a recent Culture series book, “Matter”, and am now reading the first Culture book, “Consider Phlebas”. Try Banks – he is a far better story-teller than Hamilton and injects his books with a lot more whimsy and humour. Also he has extroardinary imagination, particularly on massive scale set pieces, and his use of imagery is second to none.

I’ll persevere with Hamilton but suggest you give Banks a whirl.