Yes, I still use an RSS reader in the year 2018. (How else does one keep up with XKCD?) My mistake, after the Google Reader shutdown, was to use a another free product. Kicking the can down the road never works out, I hear you say and rightly so.
Once upon a time, I had a hand-rolled RSS reader built on Magpie RSS. Putting aside the fact that it was PHP, it worked well enough to present the web in a chronological format. Maybe it’s time party like the 90s and roll my own reader again. I’m sure there’s an NPM library for that. (And sure enough.)