Anathem

There are 2 notes of advice from my side when starting this book.
First, don't skip the “Note to the reader” section at the beginning the book, even though Stephenson teases you to do so, by “puzzling things out on your own”. Just don't. Do yourself a favor and read it all.

Second, the glossary. Although Stephenson explains a lot of terminology by inserting lemma's from a fictional dictionary he has an annoying habit of explaining made up words and names way later then he introduces it in the narrative. Don't wait for the explanation whenever you encounter a new confusing fictional word, look it up in the glossary. Otherwise you'll find yourself re-reading whole chapters when you finally do find out the meaning of some crucial terminology.

So why these advices? Neal Stephenson loves to invent a new word for almost everything.
Some people think it's annoying and just self-indulgent. I do understand why he does it, it fits the plot line and the main ideas portrayed in this novel. On the other hand, he writes his book in English and not in his self invented languages Orth or Fluccish, so why not using the English words?
Whatever your opinion on it, it slowed me down considerably for the first 200 pages or so.

What is this book about? To me it is a mix of Carl Sagan's Contact and Blake Crouch's Dark Matter. But then Stephenson-style. So that means a lot of explaining on philosophy, quantum mechanics and science in general. He goes pretty far down the rabbit hole (as you might expect from him). Although I could grasp quite a big portion, some still went over my head. But Google is your friend here.
If you are the kind of person who likes scientific speculative fiction, this book might be for you. If you expect strong characters, great prose and an engaging plot line you might want to skip it.

For me, I rate it 5 stars in this universe and any universe.