If you haven't yet, read The Baroque Cycle too. It's set in the same universe, approximately 300 years earlier, with an ensemble cast of historical and fictional characters. Very long, very dense at times, and yet a masterful and very rewarding work in my opinion. The audiobooks read by Simon Prebble are also quite good if you don't have the time to read it in print but do have time where you could listen to it.

Yes! It's very cool to get the back-story of the Shaftoes and Waterhouses. And the enigmatic Enoch Root, who arguably appears as well in The Mongoliad trilogy. Maybe he's even mentioned in Anathem, but I may be stretching for that.