Steampunk!

It's Steampunk Week! How fun is that?

Don't know what steampunk is? That's OK. I had to get one of my students to explain it to me because I had never heard of it either, till about a year and a half ago. But once explained, it makes sense. Almost. Because steampunk is a very narrow subgenre, but with vaguely distant boundaries.

I'm probably like a lot of Americans - my introduction to steampunk has been largely through movies (like Wild Wild West; or the airship in Stardust; I would even put League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in that category - remember Nemo's ship?). But I confess - for someone who really likes visually rich and inventive stories, I haven't read much in the way of steampunk. I took Airborn, by Kenneth Oppel, to read on the plane to Australia a few years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Just the thing for a long trans-Pacific flight!) It's the only true-blue steampunk book I've read to date; although I do intend to check out Beddor's The Looking Glass Wars at my earliest opportunity.

I'm sure my readers have their own favorites and opinions, so of course I'm curious: what steampunk novels do you recommend?