diff --git a/smile/log.py b/smile/log.py
index 581b1b5..f952aa4 100644
--- a/smile/log.py
+++ b/smile/log.py
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ def __init__(self, filename, unwrap=False, **append_columns):
         self._append_columns = append_columns
 
         # set up the unpickler
-        self._unpickler = pickle.Unpickler(self._file)
+        self._unpickler = pickle.Unpickler(self._file, encoding="latin1")
 
     def read_record(self):
         """Returns a dicitionary with the field names as keys.