code: def read(*filenames, **kwargs):
      
      encoding = kwargs.get('encoding', 'utf-8')
      sep = kwargs.get('sep', '\n')
      buf = []
      for fl in filenames:
          with codecs.open(os.path.join(HERE, fl), 'rb', encoding) as f:
              buf.append(f.read())
      return sep.join(buf)
docs: Build an absolute path from ``*filenames``, and  return contents of
      resulting file.  Defaults to UTF-8 encoding.