While I think the new Google Reader changes are miles better than the old Google Reader, like others, I think the chrome takes up too much space, and not enough room is allocated to the actual RSS items you are reading.
So I fired up Greasemonkey and created a userscript called LetMeRead that does two things:
- Reduces padding on the top bars of Google Reader and adds a border to the right of the sidebar
- Adds a Show/Hide button to toggle the visibility of the secondary bar (contains the subscribe button etc.)
It has been designed to integrate flawlessly into Google Reader itself and be as unobtrusive as possible. You can install it from its page on userscripts.org