further reading reveals that this is the expected behavior.

p651 in 24.2: "select indicates an exception condition until the process
reads -beyond- the out of band data."  ...  "the solution is to only
select for an exception condition after reading normal data."  with code
examples.

in short: if you want OOB with select there are hoops to jump through
for the edge cases.  its layed out in the book.