Jack Shaftoe is one of my favourite fictional characters!
I couldn't even get through Cryptonomicon, and Jack Shaftoe did not strike me as a believable genius, nor his story. Anathem kind of strafed the line - it had SOME character development, and SOME action, but was mainly world-building / intellectual exploration. Stephenson's other books fall too far on that spectrum for me.
But I think it was incredibly interesting for me to see the Asian perspective on the west. I’ve read it more as an allegory of the different peoples of the world, shown from a perspective totally different than my own.
I do think though that you have to be a bit of a hard sci-fi fan to finish it, but the science-y ideas are very interesting. I think it changed how I view the vast cosmos, at least a little bit.
I think Diamond Age was my favorite overall Stephenson story in terms of both story and neat scifi concepts, but all of them were enjoyable. I agree on Seveneves chars all being forgettable. Dodge (The most recent one) had perhaps the dullest start, but I really liked the Dodge, Corvis, and Daisy characters.
"A Deepness in the Sky" was REALLY good. The Forever War was good for the concept.
In short, yours looks like a great list I will come back to, thank you.
However, I do strongly dislike Remembrance of Earth's Past / The Three Body Problem - it's vastly overrated in my opinion and the characters make no sense. The best part of it was the intro to the first book which gave an interesting glimpse at history.