Hmm, I thought that a lot of the ideas were still under-explored and that the book ran out of steam towards the end. I agree that it was a less ambitious book than IJ but I feel that it succeeded less even on its own terms than IJ. Not read Oblivion though.
You're right. But I just love the terms that BotS work on, even though it doesn't really develop them that well. There is this sense of posibility and freedom in the book. You can do what you want about language, you can use your tv as you want to, and if people create this vast conspiracy to do something to you, well, who cares. In IJ, everone is an addict and the world is almost destroyed. DFW really discarded a lot of the ideas from his earlier work, probably because they were incredibly naive and useless. They made me happy, though.
Another example is the setting in time. Normally, when you set something in the future you can create anything you will. BotS is set three years into the future, just for kicks. IJ is set in the near future, but most of the changes are for the worst, and has been driven by addictions and human weakness. For contrast, the final short story in Oblivion is set in the office of a magazine, located in WTC, and the time is summer 2001... It doesn't really play into the story, you just know that everyone is going to die from page 1, which is why this is not a spoiler.
On names: The thing that confuses me with Russian books is that everyone always has so many nicknames. Peter Petrovitj Petrokov will be called Peter, Pjotr, Petja, Peter Petrovitj or Petrokov, depending on who he is talking to.