select from a constructed list of strings with whitespace?

I trying to create a list of strings with spaces in, that I want to choose between in a select - something like this:

sel=""
while read l   
do
  sel=$(printf "%s '%s'" "$sel" "$l")
done< <(cd /some/data/directory;du -sh *) 

select x in $sel
do
  break
done

The string sel looks like expected: "597G 2022" "49G analysis" "25K @Recycle", but the select looks like:

1) "597G      3) "49G       5) "25K
2) 2022"      4) analysis"  6) @Recycle"
#?

What I want to achieve is of course something like:

1) 597G 2022
2) 49G  analysis
3) 25K  @Recycle
#?

And more generally, something where you can select between strings built from several data sources in some way. I have looked for inspiration in several places, like here , but it doesn't quite work for my case. ***Edit*** I forgot to mention, this bash is rather old (and I can't update it, sadly):

[admin@CoMind-UniCron ~]# bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-QNAP-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.