I liked
The Baroque Cycle a lot too. I bought the books when appeared in (1,2 in hc, 3 in mmpb) but started on them earlier this year, read
Quicksilver liked it a lot, then other books appeared, so I read
The Confusion - which I enjoyed the most of the 3 - and
System of the World after
Anathem, and then to top it off
Cryptonomicon after that - another book I bought a while ago but have not read yet.
Anathem is much smoother than the
Baroque Cycle, and having one narrator keeps the flow going. On the other hand
The Baroque Cycle was a decades spanning epic with a huge cast of characters, while
Anathem is more of an adventure, partly philosophical and scientific but with atomic bombs and martial arts too
And it's funny too - though Mr. Stephenson worships the printed book - he even has (gen. engineer.) paper trees that grow leaves which the avout harvest to write on, while he shows his disdain for mobile communicators, especially cell phones/internet tablets plainly - his Arbre incarnation of such, "the jeejah" is one of the "villains" of the story
- Arsibalt - before Reconstitution they were coming at the limits of particle accelerators at least those requiring reasonable amounts of money so they were moving towards Cosmography
- Raz - I thought in the Saecular world there is an infinite amount of money
-Arsibalt- There might be, but most of it goes on pornography, sugar water and bombs ...
- Orolo - When you say you worry about everything, what about nerve gas farting pink dragons
- Raz - nerve gas farting pink dragons do not exist
-Orolo - well then, nerve gas farting blue dragons...