I quite agree, so I'm making a meta-library to have useful libraries available out of the box: https://github.com/ciel-lang/CIEL/ It's CL, batteries included. You can use it as a library, as a core CL image (loads up faster), and as a binary to have a REPL, and to run scripts:

    ciel --script myscript.lisp

(edit) or just

    ./myscript

with a #!/usr/bin/env ciel shebang.

where you have access to HTTP clients, JSON parsers, CSV readers, DB drivers… and much more, out of the box.

It is not done, I am dogfooding it.