Anathem was my favorite book by him. It has a lotta re-read value, I appreciate the work he did to make it feel like a complete, fleshed out world. But different folks have different tastes, and that's ok.

I also liked Seveneves, but it should have ended 2/3 of the way through. There was a point that would have made for an excellent ending (which is something Stephenson famously struggles with IMO), but then he forced in another 1/3 of a book that didn't engage me and which felt like it just petered out.

I really enjoyed cryptonomicon and seveneves most recently. And while yes snow crash was a faster read with just the right amount of detail the stories in both cyrptonomicon and seveneves were absolutely worth the bit of extra detail in between. Could they have been edited shorter? Possibly, but the length of the adventure in part comes from the length of the text and I couldn’t see either being paced faster in hindsight. They were paced well.

Anathem is written in English. There's just some made up words that are generally easy to figure out the meaning of.

The “made up language” is directly tied to the plot and overall themes, and leads to an “aha” moment.

Polostan went down very easy. only read Anathem, Snow Crash, Reamde, Fall;, and Cryptonomicon. Plolostan was a novella compared to those. finished in a day or two on vacation and im a sorta slow reader

i like Polostan and generally recommend it. looking forward to the sequel in a few weeks. havent read anything Stevensons said about Polostan but if i had to guess id say it targets a YA audience instead of a high school/undergrad audience

amazing none of his books have been adapted. they play out like movies in my head, albeit a lot of men participating in the socratic method and waving at white boards

The 'sequel' that does lean on some of Reamde's worldbuilding, 'Fall; or, Dodge in Hell' is much more oddly ambitious. But it is a very strange work. You have to be on board for the literary direction.

It's also concerningly prescient, as he often has been, especially in an early scenario in the book that shapes the world so the rest of the book can happen.

Oh man, remember when getting a BMW was the high of excessive greed?

Slashdot is still there.

It's kind of tiny compared to here (<1/5th the articles maybe?) but it still has an older/Slashdot-y crowd.