A good alternative to Google Reader is simply visiting the sites you want to :-) I'm being sarcastic, but I honestly don't get the point of using a web-based RSS reader, I've always just bookmarked and visited the sites I desire to check.
So I don't have to visit a website just to make sure that there are no updates and I also don't have to use some big RSS reader with a lot of unnecessary things (ajax, tags, stars, share with friend, etc.)