I am the rare Anathem reader who enjoyed the slow first part more than the active later parts. The initial world immersion was fascinating. The Big Event and subsequent faster paced developments were a lot less memorable. But I also enjoyed the instructional sections about whaling in Moby Dick.

I laughed. It's both true, and very not helpful. It's the equivalent of a fairly long not-so-great book before a pretty good book. Hard agree.

Also agreed, although I enjoyed some of the philosophical debate in the early portions of the book so I would put Anathem higher in books I enjoyed from Neal Stephenson