I just implemented the reading quiz idea this term, and I thought that it went really well. Give the students a manageable chunk of reading material (in my case, the material came from various sources, not a single textbook), and give them an offline quiz to test their reading comprehension. The quizzes were graded by a TA, but the weight was quite small; small enough not to matter if they cheated (and cheating won't help them in the final exam. Aside: is it cheating if they didn't read the material but just hunted for the answers by skimming?) but enough to provide extra incentive to read.

In class we go over the answers to the quiz. I don't post the answers (the TA will have provided them the feedback they need when grading); rather we make it an interactive session. I answer questions the students have, we go over examples, I supplement the reading with slides if need be. Effectively, a flipped classroom.

This was done more out of necessity: first time teaching the course, no proper textbook (and in a quickly changing tech landscape for the topic at hand), lack of confidence in my own understanding of the material (I also tried gathering student questions beforehand so I could investigate them offline and come to class prepared to answer them), but now I think I'm going to stick to this way of teaching this course in the next installment next year.