Like Slime, CLSQL is a pretty standard tool. I'm surprised to have so much trouble using them together.
fyi, we are using reader macros all around our projects and swank:*readtable-alist* works good enough together with an asdf customization that enables the readers while compiling/loading the files.
http://dwim.hu/darcsweb/darcsweb.cgi?r=HEAD%20hu.dwim.asdf;a=headblob;f=/sou...
http://dwim.hu/darcsweb/darcsweb.cgi?r=HEAD%20hu.dwim.def;a=headblob;f=/inte...
hth,