You mean the book that has a 40(?)-page chapter in which characters you never hear from before or afterwards describe what's happening in their home lands didn't go into the day-to-day? :)
Lord of the Rings (the book) is obsessed with this kind of detail to the point that many people find it difficult to read.
The only characters who speak at length at the Council are Glóin, Elrond (whose account is mostly skipped over), Boromir, Gandalf (the longest account), Aragorn, Frodo and Bilbo.
All of these are previously known characters except Boromir and he is certainly a major character. Plus they all add either new backstory about the ring or foreshadow something later, like Moria has been reoccupied and there is something evil there.
So there really isn't any information given that doesn't bear on the story at all.
Tolkien could have (and I believe in his notes he has versions) written the entire council, but he elides the parts that are "told elsewhere" - Bilbo, much of Gandalf and Elrond, and anything directly already told of the Hobbits.
But Glóin actually appears in the previous chapter Many Meetings, where he is sat next to Frodo at the feast and introduces himself there.
My dad was a literature nerd. He loved Tolstoy. Personally, I’d rather be tortured by the Czars secret police than suffer through that. :)