def select(self, table, columns=None, named_tuples=False, **kwargs):
        """
        We'll create our `select` method in order
        to make it simpler for extracting data from
        the database.
        select(table_name, [list_of_column_names])
        """
        sql_str = "SELECT "

        # add columns or just use the wildcard
        if not columns:
            sql_str += " * "
        else:
            for column in columns:
                sql_str += "%s, " % column