If it was something you could do on your own you probably wouldn't have made it to AA to begin with. The words in the book really do need to be "translated" by someone who has been there. They seem to make sense, but there's really so much more there when you hear it in terms of someone else's experience.
I just recently ran in to a friend who has been sober for a few years. She said she'd decided to do it on her own because she hadn't liked working with sponsors. She said she was doing fine, but frankly she sounded miserable. She reminded me of how I was when I first started doing the steps....blaming everyone else for my problems, listing excuse after excuse of why I couldn't be happy, etc. I needed a sponsor to get me out of that.
If you don't like the idea of a sponsor, I've heard of groups doing the steps together. It's not meant to be done alone though. It's a we program.