I've been using feedly since Google decided RSS wasn't a thing any more, and have been pretty happy with it. It wasn't as good as Google Reader, but good enough. The ads are gradually becoming more invasive though, and there's less of the minimalist feel it had when I first started using it, so I've been periodically looking for an alternative.
After finding nothing I was particularly enthused by, in the end I've decided on the slightly clunkier (certainly geekier) option: taking Tim Brownawell's Python-based RSS -> IMAP bridge, and modifying it to suit my needs.
RSS-IMAP reads feed config entries from an email in an IMAP folder, and then loads the feed items as email messages (if they aren't already present in the feed-specific subfolder) - my version reads config from a yaml file instead, and uses a SQLite database to store an index of feed items that have been loaded. Using the yaml file, because I find it easier to ssh onto my raspberry pi (where this is running) and edit the feed items there; than writing a mail, sending it to myself and then copying into the RSS folder. And using a SQLite DB, because that way I can delete feed emails and they won't be re-loaded automatically. SQLite is ideal for this sort of usage, because there's only a single process writing the data, and the index lookup is fast.
The main changes can be seen here:
https://github.com/jasonrbriggs/rss-imap/compare/master...jasonrbriggs:rss-imap:alt?expand=1
Or found in the "alt" branch of my fork:
https://github.com/jasonrbriggs/rss-imap/tree/alt
Posting in the unlikely event someone else finds these mods useful...
Long live RSS!!