It is in essence:

    read((err, txt) => {
        console.log(txt)
    })

Or

     read().then((txt) => console.log(txt))

Why is it bad?

Await doesn't synchronously block in Javascript.

http://docs.scala-lang.org/overviews/core/futures.html#block...

And how do you suggest to do that without "blocking"? :) Sure, you could use a stream but that isn't always possible or practical.

That's not what blocking means.

Well, it depends...

async function is blocked on await statement, after all that's why it has such a name.

It does not block the whole VM but task (async function) is effectively blocked for an observer inside it.

Yes but when you talking about async/await, "blocking" means "blocking the thread". And this is very clearly what mehwoot meant.