I've found myself giving up on Google Reader for RSS feeds time and again, due to its sluggishness and tendency to crash Firefox, Chrome or whatever browser's en vogue for me. Have tried countless suggestions but to no avail. Well here's what I did and would you believe it worked!
Bogs. Try my tip in the link. It really worked for me and my system isn't optimised. Others have said it worked for them too. Note I tried mine in Firefox.