import codecs


def read_file(filename, encoding="UTF-8"):
    """
    :param filename: string
    :param encoding: string: the encoding of the file to read (standard: `UTF-8`)
    :return: list of unicode strings: the lines of the file
    """
    with codecs.open(filename, encoding=encoding) as file:
        return [u"{}\r\n".format(line.strip()) for line in file.readlines()]