using select() with pipe

I am reading/writing to a pipe created by pipe(pipe_fds). So basically with following code, I am reading from that pipe:

fp = fdopen(pipe_fds[0], "r"); 

And when ever I get something, I print it out by:

while (fgets(buf, 200, fp)) {
    printf("%s", buf);
}

What I want is, when for certain amount of time nothing appears on the pipe to read from, I want to know about it and do:

printf("dummy");

Can this be achieved by select() ? Any pointers on how to do that will be great.