I just wanted to highlight your most correct point. I always tell people to feel free to skip 20 or more pages anytime a main character starts speechifying.
As an author, Ms. Rand was not all that great. As a prophet/judge of her enemies... she's frighteningly competent.
Yes, that. At around 100 pages of carefully chosen text, Atlas Shrugged rocks. Not so much with the bajillion pages of interpersonal relationships and whatnot. I give her a little slack because my understanding is that the book was more of a movie script.
That being said, even though the text is incredibly bloated, it really is required reading just for those salient parts. The rest of the book is an exercise in patience and character building of the reader.
