Had to laugh at 'accepting that all cats have aspergers, but what has that got to do with me' - that's pretty much what ds1 said! 
It's been a long road for us as well. Ds1 was dxd just before his 9th birthday in January 2011 and it wasn't until last year that we started reading books together.
He is similar, in that he reads the books and refuses to accept that much of it is relevant to him. He reads something and then says "but I don't do X" or "I don't have problems with Y" - often when he actually does, but isn't aware enough to realise it.
He feels that it's everyone else that has the problem and he is in fact pretty perfect - BUT - conversely he also suffers from severe anxiety and low self esteem, so one poor test result in class or if someone says something mean at school that actually makes it through the ASD filter - and his is distraught. I got cross with him before Christmas and stupidly said that he was 'entitled and spoilt'. What I actually said was that his behaviour at that moment was entitled and spoilt, but he heard it as a direct criticism, went upstairs, wrecked his room and repeatedly hit himself over the head with a large encyclopedia. 
We are working our way through The Survival Guide for Kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders and will soon be moving on to The Asperkid's (Secret) Book of Social Rules: The Handbook of Not-So-Obvious Social Guidelines for Tweens and Teens with Asperger Syndrome. Although in the early stages of all this we focussed on the positives and bought books that put a positive spin on having ASD like Different Like Me and I am Utterly Unique. I also found Appreciating Aspergers, Looking at the Upside - 300 Positive Points and Parenting a Child with Aspergers - 200 Tips and Strategies useful.
The first book has been good for explaining things to him in simple terms and has raised lots of discussion, both with him and the family as a whole, but he has a tendency to pick out the one thing that doesn't apply to him and declare that as a reason for refuting the rest. We are getting there now, through lots of discussions about how ASD is a spectrum and what that means and that no two people who have ASD are the same, they all have different strengths and challenges, just like everyone else.
One interesting thing to have come out of it is that he does accept he has ASD, but strongly objects to the word 'disorder' in his dx. He says it makes him sound like he's 'wrong or messy'. I felt this was a really good insight and we discussed how many people are now calling it Autism Spectrum Condition rather than disorder, for that reason and that some people prefer 'condition' because, Autism is just different - not wrong. I also explained that people will probably find it hard to stop saying ASD, because without saying the whole words it's easy to forget what each letter stands for, so people tend to use the initials automatically, iyswim.
One thing I would say is that there is no way he would have been ready for all this at the age of 8. He is 11 in a couple of months and it's been a very slow, softly, softly approach since his dx, mainly led by him needing to know and understand more. We have also had to do a lot of work on his emotional literacy and self-understanding in order to get him to the point where he is able to think about his feelings, let alone talk about them and how they relate to the challenges he has in life.
Anyway, I'm rambling, so I'll go now, but I hope I've said something useful in there somewhere. 