I know that so soon after the upgrade is probably not the best time to request a new feature. but...

I'd like to add a new subscriber category - for lack of a better term, I'll call it a a "super-reader." That is, I'd like to make some entries viewable by only certain readers. As I see it now, the only way to do that is to give them content manager status. But I don't want this group (close friends, mostly) to be able to delete or modify stories - just to be able to read some that I might not want the whole wide world to be able to view.

Is there any way to easily do this now that I haven't noticed?

just give them contributor status; that way they can look at the story-/image-/goodiepool, but they can't edit/delete any but their own stuf (afaik).