I can totally relate, except Snow Crash stayed on my stack for both its popularity and its brevity. The fourth time I took a stab at the first chapter I was in a much lighter mood, broke through the jarring entry to an AnCap society with an unemployed hacker working as a pizza delivery driver for the mafia, and this time I found myself simply laughing at the absurdity of it. Then I was hooked. One or two passages (the library research scene?) drag out a bit. Overall: highly recommended, mostly for the sense of humor.

I know what you are talking about, despite being on the opposite end of that spectrum. Snow Crash / Diamond Age are cyberpunk/post-cyberpunk ala Gibson and completely different from Stephenson's other books.

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.

Are you by any chance referring to "Bobby" Shaftoe the WW2 Marine Raider or his ancestor King of the Vagabonds, L'Emmerdeur, Half-Cocked Jack, Quicksilver, Ali Zaybak, Sword of Divine Fire, Jack the Coiner...

This gentleman, by whatever named you call him, is perhaps my favorite Stephenson character. I hated him after the first book... it felt too difficult to related to his decisions and mistakes, but loved him by the end.

I can't remember a single character from Anathem, but its world and some of the scenes are burned into my connectome.