Steampunk Summer

For a great introduction to this science fiction subgenre, I recommend Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant. Kelly Link's story "The Summer People" is phenomenal, as is the rest of her work.
Though none of the pieces quite qualify as "steampunk," the recent New Yorker Science Fiction Issue has some fantastic short stories, along with essays from notable authors celebrating and defending genre fiction. I'm don't read science fiction exclusively, but books about aliens and ghosts (and occasionally ghost-aliens) sparked my obsession with reading that started around grade school.