title: read line with .encode with utf8
body: <p>I read line from a file like:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The Little Big Things: 163 Wege zur Spitzenleistung (Dein Leben) (German Edition) (Peters, Tom)</p>
    
    <p>Die virtuelle Katastrophe: So führen Sie Teams über Distanz zur
    Spitzenleistung (German Edition) (Thomas, Gary)</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I read / encode them with:</p>
  
  <pre><code>title = line.encode('utf8')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but the output is:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>b'Die virtuelle Katastrophe: So f\xc3\xbchren Sie Teams \xc3\xbcber
    Distanz zur Spitzenleistung (German Edition) (Thomas, Gary)' </p>
    
    <p>b'The Little Big Things: 163 Wege zur Spitzenleistung (Dein Leben)
    (German Edition) (Peters, Tom)'</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Why is the "b'" always added?
  How do I properly read the files so that the "Umlauts" are preserved?</p>
  
  <p>Here is the complete relevant code snippet:</p>
  
  <pre><code># Parse the clippings.txt file
  lines = [line.strip() for line in codecs.open(config['CLIPPINGS_FILE'], 'r', 'utf-8-sig')]
  for line in lines:
      line_count = line_count + 1
      if (line_count == 1 or is_title == 1):
          # ASSERT: this is a title line
          #title = line.encode('ascii', 'ignore')
          title = line.encode('utf8')
          prev_title = 1
          is_title = 0
          note_type_result = note_type = l = l_result = location = ""
          continue
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>thanks</p>