Regular testing can serve as an incentive for students to keep up with their readings, but the time and effort involved in composing and grading frequent tests can serve as an equally strong disincentive to time-strapped instructors. We describe a distorted-item (DI) test that simply requires excerpting sentences or phrases from the assigned reading and then distorting some of these items to make them false. The DI test is much easier to construct than a traditional true-false test and is quick and easy to grade. Moreover, because the instructor has only to point directly to the text to defend the answer key, arguments from students are rare. Student feedback suggests that they like the tests and find them a valuable aid to learning and also attests to the effectiveness of such testing in helping to regulate the timing of their reading.