New brake pads, less play?
 

I just had new brake pads installed, and I find that my brake levers have very little give/play now. It really threw me off because I wasn't expecting it. I really prefer to have to put in a little more effort to squeeze the levers. I know there are two little barrels on the handlebars you can adjust the give with, but it isn't quite enough...is there anything else to do?

V-brakes?

Yar.

Let out some brake cable (slack) by loosening the cable fixing bolt on the brake arm, about say 1/8" of cable, it doesn't take much.

spacers are probably opposite from your other pads.

From the OP's ambiguous description of the problem it's either too high cable tension on the brake or the pads were toed in much less than they were on the previous setup.

Simple,

(old pads=worn+improperly set up+familiar feel) < (new pads=thicker+properly set up+unfamiliar feel)


Solution. Position your cable adjuster about 1/3 of the way out, slacken the cable a bit at the caliper and fine tune lever feel with the cable adjuster. New brake pad will give a lever feel worlds different than old ones.